Rosenstrasse protest

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Sculpture by Ingeborg Hunzinger for the Rosenstrasse protest in Berlin-Mitte , 1995

The Rosenstrasse protest was the largest spontaneous protest demonstration in the German Reich during the National Socialist era . At the end of February / beginning of March 1943, “ Aryan ” spouses from “ mixed marriages ” and other relatives of arrested Jews in Berlin demanded their release.

course

Memorial plaque on the house, Rosenstrasse 2, in Berlin-Mitte

On February 27, 1943, the SS and Gestapo began to arrest the remaining Berlin Jews in the so-called “ factory action ” and to bring them to several assembly camps “for smuggling through”. Among the more than 8,000 arrested were numerous partners from “ German-blooded ” -Jewish “mixed marriages” and “ valid Jews ”. These (around 2000 people) were sorted out and taken to the building of the former Welfare and Youth Welfare Office of the Jewish Community, which was located in Berlin-Mitte at Rosenstrasse 2-4 close to Alexanderplatz .

As early as the evening of February 27, a crowd formed in front of the building, consisting mainly of women and relatives of the detainees. At times, there was unmistakable demand for the prisoners to be released.

In the next few days this crowd of several hundred constantly changing participants remained. The police repeatedly asked the women to leave the street. But these only avoided in side streets, only to come back shortly afterwards. There are testimonies according to which the police threatened the use of gun violence or even arrested some of the demonstrators. However, neither is confirmed by other witnesses or other sources and is therefore controversial among historians.

Result

On March 5, 25 of the detainees from the Rosenstrasse to have been forced labor in the III Auschwitz Monowitz deported . However, they were brought back and released after a few weeks. Apparently overzealous Gestapo officials had not complied with the requirements of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), according to which certain groups should be spared from deportation.

The Jews from “mixed marriages” and “valid Jews” and a few “exceptional cases” who had gathered in Rosenstrasse had been released one after the other since March 2nd and continued for the next two weeks. Almost all of these people who had been relocated to Rosenstrasse in 2000 were probably released after their information had been checked in a time-consuming process and their "status" was unequivocally established.

Of the 6,000 Jews who were imprisoned in the other assembly camps, some were deported to Theresienstadt . Most, however, were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp , where most of them were murdered immediately.

Those released from custody in Rosenstrasse had to report to the employment office and were obliged to do forced labor. Many were assigned a job at the Reich Association of Jews in Germany and its institutions. There they replaced “fully Jewish” workers who had been deported.

Interpretations

Memorial advertising pillar in Rosenstrasse, 2006

This procedure is consistent with a written instruction from the Reich Security Main Office dated February 20, 1943, according to which Jews living in mixed marriages and similar other precisely defined groups should be exempted from deportation. As a result, the necessary inspection took place in the Rosenstrasse 2-4 building. The historian Wolf Gruner points out that only a small number of the 8,000 Jews living in mixed marriage were arrested; their deportation was evidently not planned. These sources and arguments contradict the widespread view that the “protest of courageous women” was the cause of the release of the imprisoned Jews from “mixed marriages”.

Occasionally, the release is also attributed to an intervention by Cardinal Adolf Bertram .

Other researchers rely on testimony from contemporary witnesses, but these are contradictory. They assume that Goebbels personally obtained the release to end the ongoing unrest and cite his diary entry of March 6th:

“At this very moment [after severe destruction by bombing] the SD considers it favorable to continue with the evacuation of Jews. Unfortunately there were somewhat unpleasant scenes in front of a Jewish old people's home, where the population gathered in large numbers and in some cases even took the side of the Jews. I give the SD order not to continue the evacuation of Jews at such a critical time. We'd rather save this for a few more weeks; then we can do it all the more thoroughly. "

The assumption is based on this source that Goebbels had the action stopped due to the protest. In fact, however, it was accelerated according to the original instructions. On March 11, 1943, Goebbels only objected to the premature arrest of Jews from privileged "mixed marriages":

“The evacuation of the Jews from Berlin has led to some confusion. Unfortunately, the Jews from privileged marriages were also arrested first, which led to great fear and confusion. "

Even historians, who do not attribute the release of the arrested to the public protests of the relatives, praise the courageous resistance as a shining example and a rare example of moral courage in the terrorist state. Success or failure is not a measure of the moral evaluation of a resistance. However, these historians reject the assumption that such a demonstration could still have effectively influenced the murderous Holocaust , which was far advanced at this point in time.

reception

Sculpture block of women , partial view (2009)

Monuments

To commemorate the events, some monuments were erected in Berlin's Rosenstrasse:

Movie

The events of the Rosenstrasse protest were filmed in 2003 by Margarethe von Trotta under the title Rosenstrasse . Critics such as Beate Meyer criticized the distortion of the historical facts.

literature

Books

  • Wolf Gruner : Resistance in Rosenstrasse. The factory campaign and the persecution of "mixed marriages" in 1943. Frankfurt / M. 2005, ISBN 3-596-16883-X .
  • Antonia Leugers (Ed.): Berlin: Rosenstrasse 2-4. Protest in the Nazi dictatorship. New research on the women's protest in Rosenstrasse in 1943 . Annweiler 2005, ISBN 3-89857-187-4 .
  • Nathan Stoltzfus: Resistance of the Heart. The uprising of the Berlin women in Rosenstrasse in 1943 . Munich 1999.
  • Vera Friedländer : Late Notes . New Life Publishing House , Berlin (GDR) 1980. Reissued as: One cannot be half a Jew . Agimos-Verlag Kiel 1993.
  • Gernot Jochheim : Women's protest in Rosenstrasse Berlin 1943. Reports, documents, backgrounds , Hentrich & Hentrich Verlag Berlin 2002, ISBN 978-3-933471-26-0 .
  • Nina Schröder: Hitler's indomitable opponents . Munich 1997.

Essays and Articles

  • Wolfgang Benz : Kitsch as Kitsch can. Criticism of the "Rosenstrasse". In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , September 18, 2003.
  • S. Fröhlich: Review: N. Stoltzfus, Resistance of the Heart. The uprising of the Berlin women in Rosenstrasse in 1943. In: FAZ , August 18, 1999.
  • Rainer Decker: Review of Stolt zfus, Nathan: Resistance of the Heart. The uprising of the Berlin women in Rosenstrasse in 1943. In: H-Soz-Kult, May 13, 2000 .
  • Wolf Gruner: The factory action and the events in Berlin's Rosenstrasse: facts and fictions around February 27, 1943 . In: Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 11 (2002), pp. 137–177.
  • Wolf Gruner: The Factory Action and the Events at the Rosenstrasse in Berlin. Facts and Fictions about 27 February 1943 - Sixty Years Later . In: Central European History (CEH) 36 (2003), pp. 178-208.
  • Wolf Gruner: A historians' dispute? The internment of Jews from mixed marriages in Rosenstrasse in 1943. The event, its discussion and its history . In: ZfG , 52 (2004), pp. 5–22.
  • Sven Felix Kellerhoff : “We haven't done anything.” After 60 years: Historians [including Wolf Gruner] are shedding new light on the protest in Rosenstrasse. In: Berliner Morgenpost , February 25, 2003.
  • Beate Meyer: History in the Film. Persecution of Jews, mixed marriages and the protest in Rosenstrasse in 1943 . In: ZfG , 52 (2004), pp. 23–36.
  • Regina Scheer : Otto Weidt brush factory. In: Temperamente 3/1984, Berlin (DDR), pp. 62–75.
  • Nathan Stoltzfus: Somebody was there for me. The uprising of women in Rosenstrasse . In: Die Zeit , No. 30/1989.
  • Nathan Stoltzfus: For these Christians it was the heroic deed of their lives. The uprising of the Berlin women in Rosenstrasse . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , March 20, 1999.
  • Nathan Stoltzfus: The truth beyond the files. Anyone who only trusts the Nazi documents fails to recognize the resistance of the Germans. Comments on the historians' dispute over the "Rosenstrasse". In: Die Zeit , No. 45/2003.
  • Georg Zivier : The uprising of women . In: you. Weekly newspaper for women's rights and human rights , No. 2, 1945, p. 1 f. Online version

Web links

Commons : Rosenstrasse-Protest  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Terminus of the Gestapo - see Akin Jah: The Berlin assembly camps in the context of the "Jewish deportations" 1941–1945. In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtsforschung 61 (2013), no. 3, p. 211.
  2. ↑ Wolf Gruner : Resistance in Rosenstrasse. The factory action and the persecution of "mixed marriages" in 1943 . Frankfurt / M. 2005, ISBN 3-596-16883-X , p. 50 f.
  3. ↑ Usula Büttner: The other Christians . In: B. Kosmala, C. Schoppmann (Ed.): Survival in the underground . Berlin 2002. ISBN 3-932482-86-7 (briefly mentioned on p. 134).
  4. ↑ Elke Fröhlich (ed.): The diaries of Joseph Goebbels. Part II, Volume 7 (January to March 1943) Berlin a. a. 1993. ISBN 3-598-22138-X .
  5. ↑ Elke Fröhlich (Ed.): The diaries of Joseph Goebbels ...