Hans Biebow: The Nazi Businessman Who Built a Slave Labour Empire

World History: True Stories of the 20th Century · Jul 23, 2026 · 13m

Hans Biebow was the Nazi official who turned the Łódź Ghetto into a vast system of forced labor, starvation, and profit during the Second World War. Born in 1902 in Bremen, Germany, he began his career in business before joining the Nazi Party in 1937. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Biebow was appointed head of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto Food and Economic Office in Łódź, where he oversaw the administration, forced labor system, and economic exploitation of more than 200,000 Jews confined within the ghetto.

Under his authority, the ghetto was transformed into a vast slave labor…