Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion
동성애·낙태 퇴치 제국 중앙국
The central police office of Nazi Germany for the persecution of homosexuals and of abortion. Founded within the Reich Criminal Police Office by Himmler’s secret decree of 10 October 1936, it collected data on suspected homosexuals and directed their persecution across the country.
In depth
Building on the special homosexuality department set up in the Gestapo in 1934, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler founded the office by secret decree on 10 October 1936 as part of his reorganisation of the criminal police; the decree was not published in the official gazette but sent to every police office. Persecution, eased for the Berlin Olympics, intensified again with its creation. The office’s first task was to gather data on men convicted or suspected of homosexuality: it held 41,000 cards by 1940 and about 100,000 by the end of the war, a collection probably destroyed in the last days. It sent mobile special squads to the provinces to push lukewarm local police into action. Until the spring of 1938 it was headed by Josef Meisinger, also chief of the Gestapo homosexuality department, who openly approved “enhanced interrogation”, that is, torture; the criminal police officer Erich Jacob followed him, joined from 1943 by the psychiatrist Carl-Heinz Rodenberg as scientific director. The same office pursued abortion: from 1935 physicians and midwives had to report terminations and miscarriages before the 32nd week of pregnancy, and health offices worked with the criminal police to track down illegal abortions.