Defiance and Survival in Nazi Germany
The Rosenstraße Protest of late February- early March 1943 was a remarkable and rare act of public resistance against Nazi policies. It took place in Berlin when hundreds of non-Jewish German women gathered in front of the Rosenstraße detention center, demanding the release of their Jewish husbands who had been arrested during the so-called Fabrikaktion (Factory Action). This protest ultimately led to the release of approximately 1,800 Jewish men, demonstrating that public opposition could, in some cases, force the Nazi regime to reconsider its actions
By 1943, Nazi Germany had already implemented severe anti-Jewish policies, including forced deportations to concentration camps and ghettos. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 had classified Jews based on ancestry, restricting their rights and defining Mischlinge as individuals with one or two Jewish grandparents. Initially, Jews in mixed marriages were somewhat protected from deportation, but by early 1943, the Nazi regime intensified efforts to rid Germany of its remaining Jewish population. Approximately 7,000 Jews from Berlin had been deported.
The Fabrikaktion, launched in February 1943, was a mass arrest of Jewish workers in Berlin’s factories. It signaled a final push to deport the last Jews in Germany to concentration camps. Among those arrested were Jewish men married to non-Jewish women, many of whom were detained at Rosenstraße 2–4, the former Jewish community building, now a holding center in Berlin. From the outset of the Factory Action, however, the Gestapo intended to spare the Jewish spouses and Mischlinge and move them into forced-labor camps around Berlin and other major German cities. There were some 8,800 Jews residing in Berlin who were spouses or children in “mixed marriages.” These Jews were categorized as “exempted” Jews. The Gestapo did not intend to deport these “exempted” Jews to Auschwitz or to anywhere else outside the German Reich. Before dawn on Saturday, February 27, 1943, the Gestapo initiated their massive action. German police herded Jews, pulled from their jobs and homes or snatched off the streets, into trucks that transported them to designated assembly points. The German police incarcerated some 2,000 people in at Rosenstraße 2-4 and began to check their papers to determine if they qualified as “exempted” Jews.
As news spread that their husbands had been taken, hundreds of non-Jewish German women began gathering outside the Rosenstraße detention center. Unlike many forms of resistance in Nazi Germany, which were clandestine, this protest was direct and public. Witnesses recalled that the women stood in the cold for days, chanting “Give us our husbands back!” The protest escalated, with women confronting armed SS guards who threatened to shoot into the crowd. Despite the risks, they refused to disperse. Elsa Holzer, a protesting wife, asked an officer to give her husband Rudi a sandwich while he was detained in Rosenstraße. Rudi was especially fond of pumpernickel, and she made a smal
l sandwich; between the buttered bread, she placed a sheet of waxed paper with a message stating, “Dear Rudi, All the best. I love you forever. Yours, Elsa” (see image on right). She 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".
Because of the protest's unusual character in Nazi Germany, news of the demonstration spread throughout the country and eventually, to the international press. After nearly a week of demonstrations, Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda and Gauleiter (Regional Leader) of Berlin, ordered the release of the detained men. Historians suggest that Goebbels feared that violence against the protesters would create domestic unrest, which could weaken German morale during the war, especially after the military surrender to the Red Army at the Battle of Stalingrad on February 6, 1943.
Among those detained were individuals classified as Mischlinge, particularly those who had been categorized as Geltungsjuden ("considered Jewish") under Nazi racial laws. In all, the Gestapo deported to Auschwitz 25 persons of the approximately 2,000 incarcerated in the Rosenstraße concentration center. The Gestapo designated all of them as "protective custody prisoners" (Schutzhäftlinge). Auschwitz camp authorities processed them into the camp as incarcerated individuals without a selection process. Although on occasion individual “mixed-marriage” Jews were later deported and killed, the Nazi regime generally maintained its policy, decided upon at Wannsee, to defer deportation of “exempted” Jews to killing centers until after a German victory.
The Rosenstraße Protest stands as a powerful example of successful resistance within the Third Reich. While many forms of opposition were brutally crushed, the Nazi leadership chose to concede in this case. Historians debate why: some argue it was a pragmatic move to avoid domestic turmoil, while others believe it reflected the Nazis’ inconsistent policies regarding Jews in mixed marriages. Ultimately, the protest resulted in the release of nearly all the detained men, and most were not rearrested or deported. Historian Nathan Stoltzfus argued that the need to keep the appearance of the German people all united in the Volksgemeinschaft (National Community) might explain why force was not used, but:
