Documented period: 1939–1945
Łódź: ghetto rule, police logistics and prison terror
The chain from the founding order and municipal administration of the Łódź ghetto through Gestapo deportation work, Chełmno and the Radogoszcz prison.
Scope note. This regional page connects only the people and mechanisms already documented in the current source-reviewed cluster. It is not a complete list of perpetrators or crimes in the region.
Friedrich Uebelhoer’s order created the administrative framework of the ghetto, while Werner Ventzki’s municipal office shows how occupation policy entered housing, labour, property and city services. Otto Bradfisch and Günter Fuchs represent distinct levels within the Gestapo: leadership of the regional office and direction of the specialist section responsible for Jewish affairs.
The route from Łódź to the Chełmno killing centre links those administrative and police levels with the command succession from Herbert Lange to Hans Bothmann. Walter Pelzhausen’s command of Radogoszcz exposes a parallel prison mechanism, culminating in the January 1945 massacre during the attempted destruction of the prison.
Scope limitation: these seven profiles do not cover every civil administrator, ghetto official, railway employee, guard or member of the Chełmno unit. The dossier reconstructs documented functions and connections without assigning the whole history of persecution in Łódź to the people selected here.
How the regional chain worked
- 1regional order establishing and isolating the ghetto
- 2municipal administration, labour exploitation and property measures
- 3Gestapo planning, selection and deportation
- 4rail transport and killing at Chełmno
- 5detention, torture and execution at Radogoszcz
- 6postwar judgment, incomplete prosecution or absence of trial
Documented people
Circle IV
Friedrich Uebelhoer
president of the Kalisz administrative district and author of the order establishing the Łódź ghetto
missing; later declared deadCircle VI
Werner Ventzki
lord mayor of occupied Łódź and an official of the Wartheland administration
never tried; continued an administrative career in West GermanyCircle V
Otto Bradfisch
head of the Łódź Gestapo office and former commander of Einsatzkommando 8
convicted; released in 1969Circle VI
Günter Fuchs
head of Section II B of the Łódź Gestapo, responsible for Jewish affairs
life sentence in 1963Circle V
Herbert Lange
commander of Sonderkommando Lange and first commandant of the Chełmno killing centre
killed in 1945; never triedCircle V
Hans Bothmann
second commandant of the Chełmno killing centre
died by suicide in captivity in 1946Circle VI
Walter Pelzhausen
commandant of the Radogoszcz police prison in Łódź
executed in 1948Related mechanisms
Ghettos and deportations
The administrative and police chain that created ghettos, isolated their residents, organised deportations and connected occupied cities with killing centres.
Regional police apparatus
How regional Gestapo, Security Police, SD and mobile units linked central policy to arrests, deportations and executions in occupied Poland.
Administration and racial law
How ministries, regional authorities and municipal offices translated Nazi racial policy into law, housing, confiscation, forced displacement and everyday rule.
Prisons and summary courts
How detention, interrogation, a façade of legal procedure and execution operated as connected mechanisms of German occupation terror.
Plunder of property and culture
How confiscation, inventories, forced labour and transport made the plunder of persecuted people and occupied institutions systematic.
Starting sources
Each profile provides its own source set and limits. The references below establish the regional context.