On 27 February 1943, the SS and Gestapo conducted a round-up of Jews in Berlin, the so-called Fabrik Aktion. About ten thousand Jews were apprehended. The vast majority were “Full Jews” and were deported to Auschwitz, where most were killed immediately. However, around eighteen hundred were married to non-Jews, were partial Jews (“Mischlinge,” people with one Jewish and one non-Jewish parent), or were “privileged Jews” (e.g. Jews who were decorated veterans of World War I).
These “exempt Jews” were collected at the former Jewish Community Center at 2-4 Rosenstrasse. As rumors of the collection spread, family members of those detained—for the most part, non-Jewish wives in “mixed marriages”—began arriving at Rosenstrasse. Unable to obtain information through official inquiries, the women often received verification of their husbands’ location by asking guards to secure items such as ration cards from them. Fearing that their husbands were slated for deportation, like the “Full Jews” who had been arrested, the women began chanting “Give us our husbands back,” and blocking the doors. There is not a consensus on the numbers involved, but historian Roger Moorhouse contends that the most likely number of women participating was around six hundred at any one time and around a thousand overall. By the morning of 28 February, the chanting could be heard from three blocks away.
Initially, the door to Rosenstrasse 2-4 was guarded by a single Berlin policeman, but once the demonstration grew, he was augmented by additional police and SS. The SS occasionally threatened to open fire, causing the crowds to momentarily seek shelter, but the threat was never carried out. The women brought food and necessities for the interned men, while demonstrations continued from 27 February through 6 March.
Of those collected at Rosenstrasse, twenty-five were deported to Auschwitz, apparently accidentally. The remainder were released starting on 5 March and continuing until 12 March, and the twenty-five deportees were returned to Berlin. There is a dispute over whether the demonstrations influenced the releases, though the most likely explanation is that the Nazis had never planned to deport the “exempt Jews.” Rather, their status was verified and they were slated for forced labor in and around Berlin. Most were re-arrested shortly after their release from Rosenstrasse and assigned to forced labor facilities. The bulk remained in Berlin throughout the war, though they would likely have been deported to death camps after the war in the event of German victory.
As the historian Moorhouse notes:
Whichever way one interprets the events on Rosenstrasse, it is clear that it was a remarkable episode. But, while historians argue over archival minutiae and precise chronologies, the most extraordinary fact of all seems to be that a mass, popular resistance erupted in 1943, in the very heart of the Third Reich. The very fact that hundreds of Berlin women dared to demonstrate openly against the deportation of their Jewish sons, husbands, and fathers—the only protest of its kind in Nazi Germany—is little short of astonishing.
Sources
Roger Moorhouse, Berlin at War, pp. 285-291.