Berlin полностью

A rather different instance of resistance involved a protest by the non-Jewish wives of Jewish men and Mischlinge (partial Jews) who were being held at a detention center in Berlin’s Rosenstrasse. In their determination to make Berlin “Jew-free,” the capital’s Nazi functionaries had begun to deport a few Mischlinge and intermarried Jews at the beginning of 1943. They were also deporting leaders of the Jewish Gemeinde, including Leo Baeck, who was sent to Theresienstadt. In February 1943 they planned a “Final Roundup” that would cleanse the city of remaining Jews. The Fabrikaktion of February 27, 1943, constituted the first stage of the planned multiday sweep; it included Mischlinge and intermarried Jews, as did roundups on subsequent days. On Eichmann’s orders, most of these Jews were interned at Rosenstrasse 2-4, a youth and welfare office of the Jewish Gemeinde. This measure was designed to make the internees and their relatives think that they would not suffer the same fate as the other Jews caught up in the sweep. Siegbert Kleeman, a functionary of the Gemeinde, knew better: “These Jews at Rosenstrasse were supposed to be put on a train, and then no one would have heard from them again,” he said.

As word spread via “mouth radio” that intermarried Jews were being detained at the Rosenstrasse center, relatives of the internees began rushing to the scene. Soon a crowd of women gathered across the street from the building. Such public gatherings were strictly illegal, but the authorities hesitated to intervene, preferring to search for the organizers. There were none. This was an entirely spontaneous action—an outburst of love suddenly become desperate. “We want our husbands back!” shouted the women as they walked up and down in the street. The women continued their protest even as an Allied air raid brought buildings crashing down all over the area. Guards at the detention center fled the building after sealing the prisoners inside. Much to the relief of the women, not to mention their interned husbands, Rosenstrasse 2-4 emerged unscathed from the raid.

By early March the regime had decided to wait the women out, expecting that they would soon tire of their protest and go home. But they did not; on the contrary, the crowd grew as more relatives, emboldened by the Nazis’ inaction, joined the protest. Threats from the police to shoot into the crowd managed to disperse it momentarily, but within minutes the protesters were back, shouting for their husbands.

With the protest dragging on, Goebbels became convinced that it would be safer for the regime to relent in this case rather than to crack down. He could see that the protesters wanted only to keep their families together, not to challenge the system as such. Moreover, the women involved were non-Jews, and their plight might easily illicit the sympathy of all married women, regardless of their husband’s race. Even the Nazis were intelligent enough to understand that stirring up the nation’s women was a bad idea. As Hitler himself was to say later: “Women’s political hatred is extremely dangerous.”

Thus on March 6, 1943, Goebbels gave orders for the release of the Rosenstrasse Jews. He justified this as a temporary concession during a crucial time—a reference to the recent disaster at Stalingrad. He had every intention of including intermarried Jews and Mischlinge in future roundups, when progress on the front might make it less imperative to retain the goodwill of working women at home. Of course that time never came, and as early as March 18, 1943, the SS issued an order not to deport any more intermarried Jews pending clarification from Hitler regarding the proper treatment of such cases. This clarification also never came, with the result that the “privileged Jews” of the Rosenstrasse escaped the fate of the unprivileged Jews who died in the camps.

The Rosenstrasse incident illustrates what positive good could come from a courageous stance against a brutal regime, but its significance should not be overstated. To a large degree, this protest was successful because it focused on a relatively narrow issue that did not strike at the core of the system. As one woman admitted later: “We want[ed] our husbands. But only that. We didn’t call out for anything else.” Moreover, this example did not inspire larger protests on a broader front. As the war dragged on, the Nazi home front was full of malaise, not least in Berlin, but it held up more or less intact until the Allied armies crushed the Wehrmacht and overran the Nazi state.

Total War