Overview
- Caption
- Hans Biebow purchases books from a street vendor in the Lodz ghetto.
- Photographer
- Walter Genewein
- Date
-
1940 - 1944
- Locale
- Lodz, [Lodz] Poland
- Variant Locale
- Litzmannstadt
- Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Robert Abrams
Rights & Restrictions
- Photo Source
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumProvenance: Robert AbramsSource Record ID: 93
Keywords & Subjects
- Photo Designation
-
GHETTOS (MAJOR) -- LODZ (Poland) -- Commerce
Administrative Notes
- Biography
- Hans Biebow (1902-1947) was put in charge of food and economic office of the Lodz ghetto in May 1940. In October 1940 it was redesigned into "ghetto administration". Biebow enjoyed wide powers in the administration of the ghetto. He extracted profits from slave labor and confiscated Jewish personal property. Hans Biebow was one of the officials who organized the transports to the Chelmno death camp from December 1941 till the end of 1942. He made sure that the ghetto administration, which employed 250 Germans, stayed in his hands and was not passed to the SS, in order to maintain high profits. In the summer of 1944 Biebow participated actively in the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto, and later supervised the removal of all the possessions from the ghetto to Germany. After the war he was tried by a Polish court in Lodz, sentenced to death and executed in 1947.
Walter Genewein (5/4/1901-1974) was born in Austria. He joined the Nazi Party in 1933 and was given the post of head of the Lodz ghetto economy serving under Hans Biebow. Genewein was also an avid amateur photographer who took color slides of the ghetto and the surrounding area.
The bulk of his collection is owned by the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt, but a second collection of his photographs were uncovered in the United States in the estate of an American GI who found them in Bremen.
- Record last modified:
- 2004-05-17 00:00:00
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1144738