RuSHA Played a Critical Role in the Holocaust

RuSHA (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt – SS Race and Settlement Main Office) played a critical role in the Holocaust because its experts made a critical determination: who was and who was not a Jew.

Who will die – and who will live. Although initially, there was no indication at all that RuSHA would ever be involved in serial mass murder of ultimately four million human beings.

RuSHA was formed in 1931 – as an internal agency of the SS. Its stated objective was to “safeguard the racial purity of the SS”. One of its duties was to oversee the marriages of SS personnel to make sure they adhere to its racial policy.

After Heinrich Himmler introduced the “marriage order” on December 31, 1931, the RuSHA would only issue a permit to marry once detailed background investigations into the racial fitness of both prospective parents had been completed and proved both of them to be of Aryan descent back to 1800.

Four years later, RuSHA began to radically expand: it was ordered to establish the (in)famous Lebensborn network of maternity homes, whose purpose was “to accommodate and look after racially and genetically valuable expectant mothers.” Then it got involved genealogy, “racial-biological” investigations and the social welfare services of SS members (including pensions – believe it or not).

Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the RuSHA formed partnership with VOMI (Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle) – Nazi Party agency founded to manage the interests of the Volksdeutsche – ethnic Germans living outside the Reich.

It got involved in the “germanization” of captured territory, monitoring of settler welfare, and the plantation of ethnic Germans in areas designated for settlement by the SS, particularly in occupied Ukraine. This involved in part, the resetting of Germans in the Nazi occupied Eastern territories and ejecting the native families from those lands. Ethnic cleansing, to put it simply.

But its most devastating (genuinely murderous) component was its advisory and executive office for all questions of racial selection. Racial examinations were performed by Rasse und Siedlungs (RUS) leaders or their racial examiners (Eignungspr;fer) in relevant cases… including the Final Solution (identification of Jews to be ultimately shipped to killing centers).

Interestingly, RuSHA employed Josef Mengele for a short time from November 1940 to early 1941, in Department II of its Family Office, where he was responsible for “care of genetic health” and “genetic health tests”.