Rosenstrasse protest

Events

In February 1943, Adolf Hitler ordered Fritz Sauckel to take half-million workers from France to work as slaves in Germany. One result of the expected inflow of French workers into German factories was that the German Jews in mixed marriages who had been working in German factories were now deemed redundant and Joseph Goebbels, the Gauleiter of Berlin ordered the "factory Jews" that had been protected so far to be deported to the death camps. On 18 February 1943, Goebbels proclaimed a policy of "Total War" in a speech in Berlin, and now argued to avoid a "stab-in-the-back" that had been alleged to have caused Germany's defeat in in 1918 required the "internal security" situation of the Reich be improved. At a meeting, Hitler and Goebbels agreed that there "could be no internal security" until the last Jews living in Vienna and Berlin could be deported "as quickly as possible". For the Nazi leadership, it was the November Revolution of 1918 that had caused Germany's defeat in World War I, not defeat on the battlefield as supposedly Germany was on the verge of victory in 1918 when the "stab-in-the-back" in the form of the November Revolution took place.

Just after the German defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad, the Gestapo had arrested the last of the Jews in Berlin during the Fabrikaktion. Around 1,800 Jewish men, almost all of them married to non-Jewish women (others being the so-called Geltungsjuden), were separated from the other 6,000 of the arrested, and housed temporarily at Rosenstraße 2–4, a welfare office for the Jewish community located in central Berlin. On the morning of Saturday February 27, 1943, the SS, the Gestapo and the Berlin police began to arrest Jews all over Berlin. One German Jewish woman working at the Siemens factory in Berlin, Erika Lewine, remembered how men from the 1st Waffen SS Division Adolf Hitler Leibstandarte stormed into the factory on the morning of 27 February, shortly after her shift started at 6:00 am carrying whips and shouting "All Jews out!". The Jews from the Siemens factory were taken to a Luftwaffe base to be sorted out. Lewine remembered: "There were two young women from Siemens with us. And when we arrived at the barracks, they began to talk about making an escape. I told them this would be stupid, but they didn't listen. They were so much in despair they took off running and were both shot. And then we had to watch the shooting after they were caught ... Then the Gestapo sorted out the men from the women. I saw my aunts and my uncles, and all my cousins, my entire family for the last time. And that I never saw them again. All my relatives from my father's side were gassed-twenty-two relatives, all from Berlin. All of them were taken in this mass action-except one aunt, who had already been taken in 1942". Another German Jew, Ernst Bukofzer, who once been a lawyer and was reduced to working in a factory, was seized by the SS shortly after coming to work and was forced onto a truck at gunpoint. Bukofzer remembered with disgust how the SS refused to allow any of the Jews being held at the Herman Goring Luftwaffe base to use the toilets and how both men and women were forced to relieve themselves in public at a trench the Jews had been forced to dig that morning. In 1938, all German Jews had lost their driver's licences, and so all Jews had to walk to work or ride the bus. To ride the bus, Jews required a special pass from the police that had to be renewed every month; all of the Jews who went to police stations on 27 February to renew their bus passes for March were instead arrested and taken to the Herrmann Goring Luftwaffe base. All Jews had to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothes at all times, so the policemen knew who was Jewish just by looking at them. Other Jews had been ordered to report to the Labour Bureau that day for a new jobs and once they arrived at the Labour Bureau were arrested and taken to the Rosenstrasse center.

The 1,800 men were so-called "privileged Jews", a category exempt from deportation and other anti-Jewish measures by reason of being married to German spouses or employment as officials of the Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland, the Jewish organisation officially recognised by the German government for the purpose of controlling the Jewish population. Jews working in the factories normally got off work at 2:00 pm, and when on the evening of 27 February, when their husbands failed to return, their wives who had formed a "telephone chain", began to call each other for information, and soon learned that their husbands were being held at the Rosenstrasse center. One woman who had not heard from husband after he left for work at 7:00 am went to the police station, and, after much badgering, a police officer told her that her husband was being held at the Rosenstrasse center. Another German woman married to a Jew, Ingeborg Schnedier-Lüschow, had been warned by a friend who had friends in the Gestapo that an "action" was being planned for late February and this time, Jews married to Aryans would be taken away. The women married to Jews had formed strong connections with each other, with one woman married to a Jew, Hilda Elkuss, remembering: "We [women married to Jews] were like-minded and got to know each other from the tennis or bridge club—even before the war". Another woman, Elsa Holzer, recalled about waiting and waiting for her husband to come home that: "Well, it turned three o'clock, and then three-thirty. Already at that point I had terrible fear. I didn't know where my husband was or where to look ... Then I thought I should have asked him exactly where at Janowitzbrücke he would be, so I could find him. Then I waited a little longer. We had no phone. I thought I might start out. Then I thought, if I go now, maybe he'll come and I'll be gone. I got sick ... At ten I simply couldn't stay at home any longer. I pulled my courage together and rode down to Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse, where Rudi worked. There at the station a man came out of the glass booth, as he saw me coming and said, 'Mrs. Holzer, I've waited for you. Here take your husband's things'". Holzer asked:"Where is my husband?", to be told "The Jews were all taken. The SS rolled in here like fire trucks and bundled them off. I don't know where to. They're gone now. Please take his things home."

Bukofzer remembered having to sleep on the floor on the Hermann Goring barracks, but was comforted by the thought that "At least I knew my wife and children were safe. By contrast, this was the worse for my fellow sufferers, who did not live in intermarriages" In the morning, the door of the Hermann Goring barracks were opened with the SS led by SS Hauptscharführer Karl Krell marching in, ordering all Jews married to Jews to one side and Jews married to Aryans to the other. At noon, Krell sent the Jews in mixed marriages to the Rosenstrasse center. As Bukofzer was being marched into the Rosenstrasse center, he saw his youngest stepdaughter on the street. Bukofzer recalled: "Impulsively I waved. Thereupon a guard gave me a kick in the seat so hard I almost fell over, and I hurried into the house with the others. But I now knew that my relatives were informed about my fate. That gave me a certain calm. Someone was there for me". Despite the media blackout ordered by Goebbels, it was not impossible for the state to arrest 5, 000 Jews in Berlin in one day without people noticing. All over Berlin on 27 February and 1 March 1943, trucks packed full of Jews were constantly going up and down the streets of Berlin, and, as one Jew remembered, most people preferred to look the other way or else they clapped their hands in approval.

One Mischling, Helga Weigert, who was 8 years old at the time, was arrested with her father by the Gestapo at her grandmother's apartment to be taken to the Levetzowstrasse synagogue. Weigert remembered: "When we arrived, we had to identify ourselves. You were categorized and put with your group", which led to couples and parents and children being separated. A Gestapo officer carrying a whip attacked those parents who reached to out to their children and those who reached out for their spouses, screaming "dogs!" and "lousy Jews!". A German man who arrived and demanded to be with his Jewish wife was punched and kicked before being thrown down the stairs with the remark that he should be ashamed of himself for being married to a Jew. Weigert remembered: "After a while we were put into a truck and taken to a building that turned out to be the Rosenstrasse. Some of the children separated from their parents weren't even old enough to go to school yet. One was rolled up, about the size of a football. Many had been plucked from the street as they played or walked to school. Of course, the parents weren't what had happened." There 43 children forlornly without their parents who wandered around looking for a familiar face. Mrs. Weigert was at work when mother phoned to tell her that her daughter and husband had been arrested, leading her to remember: "I ran, ran, ran back home, and from I ran to the Levetzowstrasse synagogue. I rushed up to go in. I wanted to see if my child was there, and my husband. But I wasn't allowed in! SS men stood in front of the door. One said, 'Get back! People are being transported from here'. 'Where will I see my husband again?' I asked. 'Wherever he goes, I will go! So I have to know'" Weigert recalled: "And then I just waited there at a little distance to see what was happening and who was being transported, and then I saw Jewish people were shoved into the truck brutally. I was horrified. I had a terrible fear ... And then I withdrew and, in terrible fear, began to make a scene there on the street. I was infuriated and cried out again and again: 'Help! Help! Help! What's going on here!' ... And then a woman approached me and said, 'Hey, don't make a scene here, or it will get much worse! If you want to do something, don't do it here alone. Go to Rosenstrasse. At Rosenstrasse you will find a number of people with the same problem as you have who are gathering together there".

All throughout March 1, more and more trucks had arrived at Rosenstrasse 2-4 to pack more and more people into the center. The people arriving at Rosenstrasse were mostly Jewish men married to Aryan women or Mischlinge. So many people were being jammed into the building that in one room people had to stand and take turns sitting down. Lewine, who had been to Rosenstrasse 2-4, recalled that the women were refused permission to use the toilet, instead given a bucket. Bukofzer recalled that: "If I stole a glance through the window I could occasionally catch a glimpse of my wife and daughters among those passing back and forth on the street. Several times I could also determine that crowds were scattered by the police." A Jewish man, Gad Beck, who worked as an orderly at Rosenstrasse 2-4, recalled: "On that first evening of the arrest there was a circle of people on the street—maybe about two hundred. No massive wall. On the second day there were already more standing there. And there I discovered my mother and her four Christian sisters ... They stood beside each other and said: 'We want our husbands back!'. That was the heroic act of their life. They didn't have anything more to lose. Their husbands had just been taken".

By this point, several of the hundreds of women gathered outside of Rosenstrasse 2-4 had announced that they would not leave until their husbands had been released. A jeep drove up with four men from the 1st Waffen SS Division Adolf Hitler Leibstandarte to tell the women to go home, but they were ignored. The authorities were astonished by the protests as it had never occurred to them this was possible, and the SS guards at the Rosenstrasse 2-4 felt it necessary to call upon the Berlin police to provide reinforcements as the crowds outside of Rosenstrasse 2-4 kept getting larger and larger. One policeman sent to guard the Rosenstrasse recalled the SS seemed extremely surprised and stunned at the crowd of women shouting: "We want our husbands back!"." In an attempt to stop the protests, the Bahnhof Börse station was closed, but the women simply walked to the Rosenstrasse instead. Weigert remembered: "Then we spread out on the street, in front of the building, and we marched back and fourth. There we said, in chorus, 'We want our husbands back! We want our husbands back!' Yes! We simply wanted our husbands back." One of the women protesting, Urusla Braun, remembered being motivated by a "courage of despair", saying this was the first time she had ever broken the law in her life, noting that her husband's brother and his wife had been taken away in 1942 to be "resettled in the East" and that was the last she had ever heard or seen of them. After much thought, she and her husband had reached the conclusion that the horrific rumors that all of the Jews being sent to be "resettled in the East" were in fact being exterminated.

The protests were briefly stopped on the night of 1 March 1943 when the Royal Air Force bombed Berlin, causing everyone to take shelter. Those held inside of the Rosenstrasse recalled the cowardice of the SS and Gestapo, who were the first to take to the cellars of the building to escape the bombing as soon as the air raid siren blew. Braun recalled mixed feelings about the bombing of Berlin: One the one hand were fury and hate against the Nazis, who deserved the attack, and on the other side there was terrible misery all around each of us-the screaming people, the hellish fires". One Jewish woman, Charlotte Isreal, stated: "I always had such fear about the air raids. But on that night I thought, that serves them right! I was so enraged. I was together with a few other, who got down on their knees and prayed. I could have laughed in scorn! But then I thought of my husband, who as locked up at Rosenstrasse. I knew they would not be able to leave the building."

On 2 March 1943, Berlin newspapers all carried violent denunciations of the British "terror attack" that had killed about 600 people and destroyed much of downtown Berlin. In Der Angriff, an editorial by Goebbels called the British bombing a test of the volksgemeinschaft, stating the interests of the volksgemeinschaft outweighed the interests of the individual and called upon people to help each other while blaming the Jews of Berlin for the bombing. Goebbels was with Hitler at Obersalzburg and did not return to Berlin until 3 March, when he first learned of the Rosenstrasse protests. Initially, the authorities expected the protests to stop after the bombing, and were stunned when the crowds of women grew larger instead. Alfred Schneider, the SS man in charge of Rosenstrasse 2-4, appeared outside of the center several times in his full black SS uniform, ordered the women home and was forced to beat a retreat when the women stayed put, with several of the women calling him a "pencil, this nobody who wants to be somebody" (a reference to his thin frame and his well-known pomposity). Several times, the SS and the Berlin police aimed their guns at the women and shouted "clear the streets or we'll shoot!". The women outside held their ground and were not shot. One of the protestors, a ten-year-old mischling Ruth Gross, who joined her mother in demanding the return of her father, said: "You went there in the first place just because you heard the rumor. 'They are there!' ... We thought: We are Aryans, and if we only stand here and we are only women, perhaps they will become fearful. That was not political resistance, but indeed, it was a protest. That was an attempt to achieve something". Elsa Holzer stated: "I thought I would be alone thee the first time I went to Rosenstrasse. I wanted to find out what was going on. I didn't necessarily think it would do any good, but I had to go see what was going on ... But as I arrived, I saw a crowd-at six in the morning already! People flowed back and fourth. The street was full. This short little street was black with people.". Holzer brought with her a pumpernickel sandwich in which she had written a message reading: "Dear Rudi, all the best. I love you forever, your Elsa", which she managed to persuade a policeman guarding the Rosenstrasse to take to her husband.

One woman, Hilda Elkuss, had seen her Jewish husband Dieter's two sisters and two aunts taken away in 1942 to be "resettled in the East", and, as they were never heard from again, was forced to the conclusion that they were all dead. Elkuss stated she protested "to accomplish something ... We were really quite courageous. Of course. We belonged to our husbands. It was actually this feeling that we belonged there and had the right to be there that motivated us. It wasn't a law, but it was our right". In an interview, Weigert said: "We wanted our husbands and had a right to that. That was out of self-respect, the protest. The Weigert family has always been a decent family and we've had a certain pride. Of course they would have been deported if we hadn't asked questions and demonstrated. When a person is in need, a person is also courageous." One woman, Johanna Löwenstein, remembered: "At first I was if I were paralyzed. But it was nothing less than a flood of people that poured into the street, and of course I also joined in. It was a feeling of solidarity with one another that drove us on and gave us courage". Joining Lowenstein was her sister, a member of the NSDAP, the wife of the mayor of Potsdam who wore her golden party badge as she demanded freedom for her Jewish brother-in-law.

By 4 March 1943, the regime felt threatened enough by the protests at Rosenstrasse to lash out by executing the last members of the Communist Herbert Baum resistance group who had burned down a Nazi art exhibit in Berlin in May 1942 while arresting several prominent Jewish intellectuals, who were all sent to Auschwitz. The RSHA favored shooting all of the women protesting on Rosenstrasse, but this plan was vetoed by Goebbels, who argued that the protests were apolitical, an attempt by women to keep their families together rather an attempt to bring down the Nazi regime. The Nazis keenly remembered how the November Revolution of 1918 had brought down the monarchy, and any public crack in the volksgemeinschaft was viewed with extreme trepidation. In the aftermath of the Battle of Stalingrad, a defeat which had gravely shaken German morale and led to the first signs of defeatism amongst the German people, Goebbels had proclaimed a policy of Total War. Goebbels argued that there was no way the regime could massacre thousands of unarmed women in the middle of Berlin and keep the massacre secret, and the news of the massacre would further undermine German morale by showing that the German people were not all united in the volksgemeinschaft for Total War. The American historian Nathan Stolzfus argued that the need to keep the appearance of the German people all united in the volksgemeinschaft might explain why force was not used, but:

"Nevertheless, had there been no protest on Rosenstrasse, the Gestapo would have kept on arresting and deporting Jews until perhaps even Eichmann's most radical plans had been fulfilled. Differences existed between Eichmann's office an the leadership on the importance of maintaining social quiescence during deporations, but this would not have mattered if the protests during the Final Roundup had not arisen. Power plays surrounding decision-making on intermarried Jews and mischlinge do not so much explain the survival of these Jews as point to the regime's fear of unrest. There would had been no hesitation and no conflict among officials had intermarried Germans cooperated fully with Nazi racial aims ... It was the recalcitrance of intermarried Germans that had made a real issue out of the different positions of the top leadership and the RSHA on the importance of social quiescence in the first place and it was their protest in 1943 that soon caused Goebbels to revert to the position of temporarily deferring these problem cases.":

On 5 March 1943, the SS sent in trucks with machine guns to threaten the women on the Rosenstrasse, but despite the menace of the machine guns aimed at them and the threat to gun them all down, the women remained. Holzer later stated in an interview: "We expected that our husbands would return home and that they wouldn't be sent to the camps. We acted from the heart, and look what happened. If you had to calculate whether you would do any good by protesting, you wouldn't have gone. But we acted from the heart. We wanted to show that we weren't willing to let them go. What one is capable of doing when there is danger can never be repeated. I'm not a fighter by nature. Only when I have to be. I did what was given me to do. When my husband need my protection, I protected him ... And there was always a flood of people there. It wasn't organized or instigated. Everyone was simply there. Exactly like me. That's what is so wonderful about it".

On 6 March 1943, Goebbels in his capacity as the Gauleiter of Berlin ordered all of the people imprisoned at Rosenstrasse 2-4 released, writing "I will commission the security police not to continue the Jewish evacuations in a systematic manner during such a critical time [a reference to the defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad]. We want to rather spare that for ourselves until after a few weeks; then we can carry it out that much more thoroughly". In reference to the protests, Goebbels attacked the RHSA, stating "One has to intervene all over the place, to ward off damages. The efforts of certain officers are so lacking in political savvy that one cannot let them operate on their own for ten minutes!". On 1 April 1943, the American Legation in Bern reported to Washington: "Action against Jewish wives and husbands on the part of the Gestapo ... had to be discontinued some time ago because of the protest which such action aroused". Leopold Gutterer, who was Goebbels's deputy at the Propaganda Ministry, remembered that Goebbels stated if force was used to crush the demonstrations, it would prompt wider protests all over Berlin, which might soon become political, and could possibly even lead to the overthrow of the Nazi regime. Gutterer stated in an interview: "Goebbels released the Jews in order to eliminate that protest from the world. That was the simplest solution: to eradicate completely the reason for the protest. Then it wouldn't make any sense to protest anymore. So that others didn't take a lesson [from the protest], so others didn't begin to do the same, the reason [for the protest] had to be eliminated. There was unrest, and it could have spread from neighborhood to neighborhood ... Why should Goebbels have had them [the protestors] all arrested? Then he would have only had even more unrest, from the relatives of these newly arrested persons". Gutterer also said: "That [protest] was only possible in a large city, where people lived together, whether Jewish or not. In Berlin were also representatives of the international press, who immediately grabbed hold of something like this, to loudly proclaim it. Thus news of the protest would travel from one person to the next". Goebbels swiftly realized that to use force against the women protesting on the Rosenstrasse would undermine the claim that all Germans were united in the volksgemeinschaft, which was especially threatening as belief in the volksgemeinschaft held the German home front together. Furthermore, using force against the protestors would not only damage the volksgemeinschaft, which provided the domestic unity to support the war, but was also draw unwanted attention to the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Stolzfus wrote: "A public discussion about the fate of deported Jews threatened to disclose the Final Solution and thus endanger the entire war effort." Despite the news blackout imposed by Goebbels, the news of the protests on the Rosenstrasse had travelled swiftly by word of mouth all over Germany and beyond; in Switzerland, British and American diplomats heard rumors of the Rosenstrasse protests, and in the first week of March 1943, British and American newspapers reported on the protests in Berlin. Goebbels hit back by having the German newspapers claim that the women were actually protesting against the British bombing of Berlin, and far from cracking, the volksgemeinschaft was stronger than ever, stating that charity donations in Germany had gone up 70% in the last year [i.e. a sign that the volksgenossen or "National Comrades" all cared for each other]. Hitler himself expressed concerns that the protestors on the Rosenstrasse reminded him too much of those Germans who protested against World War I in 1918, which presaged the November Revolution. The National Socialist regime had based its claim to legitimacy to a very large extent on the claim the volksgemeinschaft had been created in 1933, and anything that suggested that the volksgemeinschaft was maintained only by force instead of free will thus threatened the regime's claim to legitimacy. On 9 March 1943, during a meeting, Hitler told Goebbels that he acted "correctly" as he understood the "psychological" reasons for the Rosenstrasse protests. Having praised Goebbels for "having done the right thing", Hitler added he still expected Goebbels to make certain the Jews of Berlin "disappeared", if just not right now. The Reichsfüherer SS Heinrich Himmler, through he intensely disliked Goebbels, also approved of releasing the Jews held on the Rosenstrasse. Himmler, who liked to boast that he "felt the pulse of the German people", had advised in 1941 during the protests against Action T4 program to cancel the program as it was creating too many protests, now advised that it was better to give in as to use force would only cause more protests.

As the Jews were released from the Rosenstrasse 2-4, they were warned by the Gestapo that this was not the end, and to enjoy their moment of freedom while it lasted, because they would be coming for them again. When Gerhard Braun, one of the Jews imprisoned at the Rosenstrasse, knowing what "resettlement in the East" meant, recalled that despite the threats, he felt like he had been reborn and God had given him a new lease on life as he walked out to freedom. Braun remembered: "I had to pick up my papers at my old place of work because I was given new work for another job. On the way there an old woman who recognized me as a Jew. There on the open street this woman hugged me, saying something like 'How nice it is that you're here again, young man'. There were such signs of sympathy in Berlin". Bukofzer recalled: "When I left that house, equipped with my official release note and instructions to appear again at the work office for a new job, my wife and both daughters were there, expecting me. They had already been there for hours patiently sticking it out, and led me home, glowing with happiness. I was exhausted, as if a heavy burden had fallen from my shoulders. There had indeed been hours when I had not expected to return once again to the circle of family. Having reached home at least, I had above all the need for a warm bath because I looked like a pig—as one says in good German. It was, however, not so simple to get a good bath because warm water, because of the dearth of coal, was turned off. Every bit of water had to be heated on the stove. But indeed, the friends in our apartment house had already got news of my return and had carried affectionately and cleverly in advance huge vessels of boiling water to us, so that we succeeded in filling the bathtub. Of course I was extremely moved by this show of concern from my Aryan fellow citizens. This bath filled me with a particular sense of comforting feelings."

Despite his promise to Hitler, Goebbels did not try to deport the men of the Rosenstrasse to Auschwitz again, saying the risk of protest was too great, and instead ordered the men of the Rosenstrasse to stop wearing their yellow stars of David on 18 April 1943. Without knowing it, the women who protested on the Rosenstrasse had also saved the lives of other Jews. On May 21 1943, in response to a question from the chief of the Security Police in Paris, Rolf Günther, who was Adolf Eichmann's deputy at the Jewish Desk of the RHSA, stated that French Jews married to Gentiles could not be deported until the question of German Jews in mixed marriages was "clarified". As half of the Jews living in mixed marriages in the Reich were living in Berlin, the question could not be "clarified" until Jews living in mixed marriages in Berlin were deported, which thus led Günther to rule no deportations of French Jews in mixed marriages at present. On 21 May 1943, Ernst Kaltenbrunner of the RHSA issued a memo ordering the release of all German Jews in mixed marriages from concentration camps except those convicted of criminal offenses. The same memo listed four categories of Jews who until now had been spared deportation, including those considered "irreplaceable" by the arms industry; the memo ordered the first three categories deported, but spared the fourth, namely those in mixed marriages as it stated a repeat of the Rosenstrasse protests was not desirable. The men imprisoned in the Rosenstrasse survived the Holocaust.

Remembrance

The building on Rosenstraße, near Alexanderplatz, in which the men were held, was destroyed during an Allied bombing of Berlin at the end of the war. The original Rosenstraße location is now marked by a rose-colored Litfaß column 2–3 meters high, dedicated to the demonstration. Information about this event is posted on the Litfaß column.

In the mid-1980s, Ingeborg Hunzinger, an East German sculptor, created a memorial to those women who took part in the Rosenstraße Protest. The memorial, named "Block der Frauen" (Block of Women), was erected in 1995 in a park not far from the site of the protest. The sculpture shows protesting and mourning women, and an inscription on the back reads: "The strength of civil disobedience, the vigor of love overcomes the violence of dictatorship; Give us our men back; Women were standing here, defeating death; Jewish men were free." The Israeli historian Omer Bartov observed that the memorial does not actually explain what the Rosenstrasse protests were or achieved, as if many Germans would prefer to forget about the protests, presumably because the protesters achieved their demands.

The events of the Rosenstraße protests were made into a film in 2003 by Margarethe von Trotta under the title Rosenstraße.