Residents, families of victims, veterans, MPS and local officials gathered on Monday at the former prison site, now part of the Museum of Independence Traditions in Łódź, to attend a remembrance ceremony and honour guard volley.
In January 1945, hours before the Red Army entered Łódź, the Germans executed some prisoners by firing squad and locked the rest inside the building, which they then set on fire.
Those attempting to escape were shot. Only around 30 of the 1,500 prisoners survived.
"Before the burnt building lay piles of charred bodies, and families searched for their loved ones," said Łódź deputy mayor Adam Pustelnik.
"The burning of Radogoszcz prison was one of the most dramatic events in Łódź, which had been incorporated into the Reich."
The prison was established by the Germans in 1940 in a former textile factory.
Initially a camp, it later became a police prison.
From 1940-41 it held mainly Poles forcibly evicted from their farms.
After mid-1942 it served primarily as a transit prison for men being sent to prisons, forced labour camps or concentration camps.
The last surviving prisoner, Donat Doliwa, died in January 2018 aged 96.
He had been imprisoned there from December 1943 to January 1944 before being released a year before the fire.
"It was a terrible prison. Three times a day there were roll calls and three times a day there were beatings," Doliwa recalled in 2017.
"If someone fell ill, they went to the medical orderly Mateusz, who had a stick thicker than mine – and never returned upstairs. It was a place of extermination."
The Red Army entered Łódź on 19 January 1945.
(ał)
Source: PAP