Heinz Röthke

Heinz Röthke (19 January 1912 – 14 July 1966) was a German SS-Obersturmführer of Nazi Germany and a convicted war criminal. Röthke was the Gestapo Jewish expert in Paris, and, as such, was in overall charge of the concentration camp in Occupied France as well as of the deportation of Jews, between 1940 and 1944, during the Holocaust.

Biography Röthke first studied theology then Law, graduating with a doctorate of law from the University of Berlin. During the German occupation of France, he initially served as a (military administration counselor) in Brest, before becoming deputy of Theodor Dannecker, the principal architect of the Jewish Question, in spring 1942. He took over from Dannecker as chief of the Department for “Jewish Affairs” on 2 July of the same year. Under his supervision, Jewish women, children, and elderly started to be sent to camps in addition to men. Röthke served in this role until August 1944. His assistants were Ernst Heinrichsohn and Horst Ahnert. On 6 March, he wrote in a memorandum:

In 1945, Röthke was found guilty of war crimes by a French tribunal and sentenced to death in absentia. He escaped to West Germany, where he resumed his career as a lawyer and lived undisturbed in Wolfsburg. In October 1961, he received a monthly pension from the Free State of Bavaria. Röthke died a natural death in July 1966 in Wolfsburg.