A Berlin lawyer, Auerswald was head of Jewish Affairs in the Warsaw District. He was named Chief of Police of the Warsaw Ghetto on May 15, 1941. He reported directly to the Generalgouvernment authorities. Auerswald fixed the Ghetto's boundaries and led a ruthless war on “szmooglers”, including women and children whose arbitrary execution he ordered whenever they were caught on the “Aryan” side. Such measures affected the price of goods brought back by szmooglers, but the latter never gave up. Listed among Nazi war criminals, he was the subject of a preliminary investigation in the sixties. But Heinz Auerswald died before being brought to trial.
