Rosenstrasse protest

"[2] Laws against German-Jewish relations implemented by the regime were precedented by reports made by citizens of what they considered to be antisocial or deviant behavior.

As they encountered many Jews in their day-to-day lives, German women were not susceptible to "propaganda's abstract evil depictions", causing the regime to turn to force.

[7] However, these intermarried Jews were woven tightly into their communities, and the regime, cautious of "antagonizing non-Jewish Germans and injuring public morale" had delayed.

[9] On February 18, 1943, Goebbels proclaimed a policy of "Total War" in a speech in Berlin - he argued that the threat of a second "stab-in-the-back" required the "internal security" situation of the Reich be improved.

[13] According to Mordecai Paldiel, Holocaust survivor and former Director of the Department of the Righteous among the Nations program at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust authority, "The Rosenstrasse protest embraced hundreds of women at the site where most of the Jewish men were interned (in a building which previously served the Jewish community in Berlin), before being processed to the camps... who gathered every day, and facing armed Schutzstaffel (SS) soldiers, shouted: "Give us our husbands back!

[2] Ursula Braun, a fiancée of one of the interred Jewish men, recalled mixed feelings about the bombing of Berlin: "On 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".

[2] American historian and professor Dr. Nathan Stoltzfus 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 and the leadership on the importance of maintaining social quiescence during deportations, but this would not have mattered if the protests during the Final Roundup had not arisen.

[17] On March 6, 1943, Goebbels in his capacity as the Gauleiter of Berlin ordered all of the people imprisoned at Rosenstrasse 2-4 to be 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].

Using force against the protestors would not only damage the volksgemeinschaft, which provided the domestic unity to support the war, but would also draw unwanted attention to the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question".

Stoltzfus wrote: "A public discussion about the fate of deported Jews threatened to disclose the Final Solution and thus endanger the entire war effort.

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].

On May 21, 1943, Ernst Kaltenbrunner of the RSHA issued a memo ordering the release of all German Jews in mixed marriages from concentration camps except those convicted of criminal offenses.

In 2003 German historian Kurt Pätzold explained part of what is at issue: arguing that a protest rescued Jewish lives "strikes at the center of the historical perception of the character of the Nazi regime and the way it functioned, and weighs on judgments about the possibilities for resistance."

Ultimately, the question is whether the Jews released following the Rosenstrasse demonstration owe their lives to the protest, or whether as another German historian wrote, they have the will of the Gestapo to "thank" for their survival.

Recently, some German historians have set the protest within the contexts of left-wing resistance, Jewish underground survival, and Nazi policies of forced labour and deportation.

Wolf Gruner[20] has argued that at this time the Gestapo excluded Jews with Aryan partners from expulsion, and corrected Berlin officials who tried to remove them.

German historian Diane Schulle summarizes this perspective in her essay "Forced Labour": "Gruner…suggests that regardless of the protests, the deportation of mixed-marriage partners had never been part of the plan.

As evidence, Gruner says that on February 20, 1943, Himmler's Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) ordered that intermarried Jews were to be exempted from the deportations "temporarily".

As Gauleiter Joseph Goebbels resolved to make Berlin Judenfrei by March 1943, pushing out all persons wearing the star, there was a simultaneous pull from the Auschwitz-Buna camp for slave laborers, as Joachim Neander has shown.

[22][23] Arthur Liebehenschel, also of the Economic SS, made it clear these forced laborers would come from the deportations of Berlin Jews, and that he expected Auschwitz to receive not 9,000 but 15,000 workers.

[22][23] Neander has calculated that supplying Auschwitz-Buna with 11,000 Jewish slave laborers by mid-March 1943 would have required the inclusion of seven thousand intermarried Jews from Berlin.

Although the massive arrests of Berlin Jews beginning on February 27, 1943 are commonly known as the "Fabrikaktion", or "Factory Action", this term was never used by the Gestapo, but was instead invented following the war.

Using the Gestapo's terms is important because Jews were arrested at their factory workplaces, at home, and persons seen on the streets wearing the Jewish star were chased down and carted off to be dispatched from Berlin.

While the Berliner Tagesspiegel on February 27 credited that protest with rescuing two thousand Jews, Der Spiegel on March 2 represented institutions and persons who sharply disagree.

In this position, "Aryan" (non-Jewish) partners who demonstrated for the release of their husbands are to be commended, although their protest made no difference whatsoever since their protest coincided perfectly with Gestapo plans: "A decree of the Reich Security Main Office, however, did not provide for the deportation of any Jews living in a so-called mixed marriage, but only the removal from the factories, in order to ‘capture’ [erfassen] them, after which they were to be released back to their homes ... "[24] The standard evidence for this position referred to by Der Spiegel’s editors is the decree of the Frankfurt/Oder Gestapo circulated by the Administrator for the District of Calau dated February 25th, 1943, as interpreted by Gruner.

For Gruner, "interpreting the Rosenstrasse protest as rescuing intermarried Jews carries "the danger of dramatically underestimating the regime’s power to dominate (Herrschaft).

"[25] Dr. Nathan Stoltzfus responded to Gruner's comment that "a dictatorship that would lash out in every direction at any sign of opposition would be dramatically less dangerous than one that knew how to use force and terror more instrumentally.

Uppity behavior of Jews in a still-existing mixed marriage, is to be punished by placing them in protective custody with a request for their placement in a concentration camp.

[28] German politician Petra Pau, vice president of parliament and member of Germany's socialist party Die Linke, gave a speech in the Bundestag marking the anniversary.