Beth GryczewskiModernity, Totalitarianism. Fall 20088 December 2008

The Rosenstrasse Protest: Resistance in the Third Reich

Introduction

By February of 1943, Germany was almost Jew-free; the majority of the

remaining Jews in Germany were living in Berlin (Stoltzfus 193). In an operation that

came to be known as the Final Roundup, Goebbels arranged for the detention and

transport out of Germany of the remaining Jews there (Stoltzfus 192-208). Many of these

Jews were either married to non-Jews or Mischlinge—mixed German and Jewish—and

had been, until late February 1943, protected by virtue of the fact that they were married

to non-Jews or of mixed German race (Stoltzfus 192-208).

Most of the Jews were immediately transported to any number of death camps in

the east (Andreas-Friedrich, Document 4). The detained Jews that were married to non-

Jews were transported to a Gestapo headquarters in Berlin—ironically, a building that

used to be a prominent Jewish cultural and administrative center on the Rosenstrasse

(Grossman, Document 1). Usually detained Jews were held at the detention center for

about two days before they were sent off to other work camps throughout Germany

(Stoltzfus xxix-xx). When the German spouses got word that their husbands had been

detained (most of the non-Jewish spouses in this instance were women, wives), they

rushed to Rosenstrasse to get more information, or to try to get their spouses released

(Israel, Document 2; Cohn, Document 3; Andreas-Friedrich, Document 4).

A spontaneous protest erupted when many hundreds of family, friends and loved-

ones converged on the scene (Israel, Document 2). After about a week of these

gatherings, for any number of reasons, Joseph Goebbels instructed the Gestapo to release

the “inter-married” Jews. He could not run the risk of this protest growing or spreading

throughout Berlin, especially not at a time when German confidence in the Nazis and the

Fuhrer was in decline.

Given what is known about the Nazi regime (the use of terror and coercion to

advance its agenda, especially), some important questions or issues arise regarding the

incident of the Rosenstrasse protest. Additionally, these particular primary sources

illustrate some important themes from the existing historiography on the subject of the

rise of the Nazis and life in Nazi Germany: issues of resistance and compliance—what

caused the German women to finally resist the Nazi law1? How/why did the women get

away with it? What caused the Gestapo to release the detained Jews? What influenced

their decision to not fire on the women in the protest? Why did other Germans not try to

resist all along?

The Documents

The documents under analysis in this investigation are a compilation of brief

excerpts (translated into English from the German) from memoirs, interviews and diaries

of four Germans directly affected by the events of 27-28 February 1943, and excerpts

from Joseph Goebbels’ journal entries reacting to the Rosenstrasse protest after the Final

Roundup was attempted. An analysis of the diary entries suggests that the Germans who

protested were successful in their protest because of their pure German-ness, and perhaps

even because there were large numbers of women protesting. Claudia Koonz analyzes

1 Stoltzfus indicates that the Germans, who married and did not divorce the Jews, even after the Nuremberg Laws, had been active resisters of the Nazi regime all along (since the Nuremberg Laws technically made marriage to Jews illegal, and encouraged Germans to divorce their Jewish spouses) (Soltzfus xxvi-xxvii). The final roundup of the Mischlinge and subsequent protest was just another active resistance on the part of the Germans, according to Stoltzfus.

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the many different roles of women in Nazi Germany in her book, Mothers in the

Fatherland. One of the issues that Koonz deals with is the fact that the Nazis did not take

women seriously, so women were left to their own devices (Koonz 54-55, 128-129).

Essentially, that left opportunities open for the women to plan and organize at will,

perhaps without even arousing suspicion. Although the protest at Rosenstrasse was

spontaneous, it still does not discount the fact that because the Nazis believed the women

to be incapable of political action, the women were potentially made stronger as a group.

Given that women were not taken seriously as a political group with influence, they could

have quietly organized substantial resistance actions and organizations.

Another related point that Koonz makes is the fact that the women actually did

have a role in getting their husbands released. Mothers in the Fatherland indicates a two-

fold role for the women: that they were left alone to do their own thing because the Nazi

leadership did not take them seriously, or did not believe that they should have a public

role, and second, that the women, in this instance, did actually have an important role in

the protest (Koonz Mothers 55).

Like the Catholic women in Mothers in the Fatherland, the women of the

Rosenstrasse protest resisted in quiet ways and well before the Final Roundup, until it

was necessary to protest in public (Koonz Mothers 280-290). For instance, the lives of

these German women (and others like them who were married to Jews) were directly

affected from the time of the passage of the Nuremberg Laws, and they had been

enduring public pressure from the early 1930s through the entire war for remaining

married to their Jewish spouses (see the discussion in footnote 1 above). By the time of

the Final Roundup of the Jews, the Germans who had stayed with their spouses had been

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in quiet, active resistance of the Nazi race laws for years; so the Rosenstrasse protest was

not so out of character for them, although the protest was a more public one than what

they had been doing for years (Stoltzfus xxvi-xxix).

Also, public opinion would not support a police attack against women, “the

weaker sex,” as the Nazis believed them to be (Koonz Mothers 335-336). The Gestapo

could not bring themselves to shoot into the crowd of protestors, and inexplicably

withdrew all of the guns and the men from the scene, thus leaving the women protestors

in control of the block around the building (Israel, Document 2). Their reluctance to

shoot into the crowd could have been for any number of reasons: the fact that most of the

crowd were women, and the Gestapo did not want to deal with a public relations

nightmare; the fact that the protestors were pure German women, and the Gestapo did not

want to indiscriminately kill pureblood Germans; or the fact that the international press

was present, and the Gestapo did not want an international public relations crisis

(Stoltzfus 245-246). The Gestapo subsequently was ordered to release all of the Jews

married to Germans and the Mischlinge.

Although personal, yet quiet resistance, as suggested by Koonz in Mothers in the

Fatherland, (coupled with the fact that women were not taken seriously as a political

force) may have been factors in the women’s protest at Rosenstrasse, there are certainly

other factors at play in this protest. As Eugen Weber suggests in Peasants to Frenchmen,

sometimes people do not take action until it is clear that their action would be beneficial

to them (Weber 483-484). In other words, the women did not act out until they were

personally affected; but Weber’s idea can be taken even further to suggest that the

women protested because to not protest would be detrimental to themselves and to their

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families. At that moment, it became more of a benefit for the women and their families if

the women were to take this action to get their husbands, and in some cases, children,

released. Just as it is in the best interest of the peasant to leave behind a life of

subsistence farming, so the German women have decided that it is in their best interests

as wives, mothers and German citizens to protest the detention of their husbands and

children (Weber 484).

The spontaneous nature of the protest and the feeling of camaraderie (or shared

purpose) amongst the protestors call to mind several themes as analyzed in Lynn Hunt’s

book, Politics, Culture and Class. In this book, Hunt describes, in part, the importance of

rhetoric and ritual, revolutionary slogans and gestures, and symbols and dress in creating

a revolutionary political culture in the French Revolution. That is not to say that the

Rosenstrasse protest was revolutionary or in any way like the French Revolution;

however, some of the features of revolutionary activity as described by Hunt can be seen

in the Rosenstrasse protest.

One of the elements that Hunt describes is the “mythic present” where an

ideology, if you will, or consensus, is captured all at once, in the same moment by a mob

of active citizens fighting for a common cause (Hunt 27). The problem with the “mythic

present,” though, is that it is “inherently undatable” (Hunt 27). Presumably, that means

that although there is a moment of consensus, it is not a specific moment that anyone can

concretely point to. Furthermore, according to Hunt, that moment constantly changes. It

is clear from the diary entries that the Rosenstrasse women experienced the moment of

the “mythic present,” although it is not so clear when that happened2; it is possible that 2 Charlotte Israel described her experience at the demonstrations: “We yelled and screamed that they should hand over our husbands...The demonstration grew with each day. I went there every day and could hear the shouts already from the Borse station. The situation in front of the camp escalated. The SS pointed machine guns at us...Behind a machine gun one man opened his mouth wide—maybe he gave a command.

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they experienced the “mythic present” at several different times, since their protest

spanned several days, most of the women going home at night, only to return to

Rosenstrasse the next morning to continue the protest (Grossman, Document 1; Israel,

Document 2).

Along with this idea of the “mythic present,” Hunt describes the importance of

ritual in revolutionary politics (Hunt 27). Again, the women of the Rosenstrasse protest

were not attempting a revolution in the sense that they were not trying to topple the Nazi

regime; they were simply trying to get their husbands released, which was, in a sense

revolutionary, since the Nazis were determined to rid the city (the country) of all the

Jews. The “ritual” that the women engaged in during the protest was the fact that they

continued to show up at Rosenstrasse everyday until they succeeded in getting their

husbands and family released from detention (Israel, Document 2). According to

Charlotte Israel, she went to the detention center at Rosenstrasse every day to protest the

detention of her husband (Israel, Document 2). Her ritual was to go to the building early

in the morning, protest until late at night, then return the next day at daylight. Some

women actually remained and protested all through the night in a similar ritual (Andreas-

Friedrich, Document 4).

Hunt’s analysis of revolutionary rhetoric can be also applied to the women’s

protest at Rosenstrasse. Some of the diary entries report the women shouting at the

building and at the soldiers to release their husbands, their children, and that the Gestapo

are murderers (Grossman, Document 1; Israel, Document 2; Andreas-Friedrich,

I never heard it, it was drowned out. Then something unexpected happened: The machine guns were removed. There was total silence in front of the prison, only a few isolated sobs could be heard. My own tears froze on my face in the ice cold. That was the worst day.” For her this may have been the moment of the mythic present when fear of death and realization that her actions may result in her husband’s release occurred at the same time.

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Document 4). One way that rhetoric can create a new political culture, according to

Hunt, is that it “posit[s] the existence of a new community” (Hunt 49). Although the

words, “Murderers” and “Let our husbands go!” are not revolutionary slogans, in and of

themselves, the mere fact of the large group of women shouting these words in unison

created the existence of a new community of wives and mothers that had not, until the

detention of their loved-ones, existed before as a unified force (Grossman, Document 1;

Israel, Document 2).

This new community that the women were trying to fashion was a community, in

which they could live, without fear or anxiety, with their families, including those family

members that had been considered racially inferior since the early 1930s. Referring to

the Nazis as “murderers” gave voice to the collective belief that the Nazis ‘ethics’ were

unethical; it gave voice to the women wanting to create a new, real ethical community.

Shouting, “Let our husbands go!” indicated the need for the women to create a new

community in which their husbands were not considered racially impure, a community in

which they could live at peace with their families.

A final element of Hunt’s analysis that is applicable to the Rosenstrasse protest is

the issue and use of symbols. The Nazi’s use of symbols can be analyzed both from

Hunt’s perspective and from the perspective of James Scott in Seeing Like a State.

Before the Nazis came to power, the building located at Rosenstrasse was “an

administrative center of the Jewish community” (Grossman, Document 1). When the

Nazis took power, they took over this previously prominent Jewish administrative center,

and ironically, used it to register and detain Jews that were bound for transport out of

Germany. From Hunt’s perspective, the Nazi’s usurpation of this prominent Jewish

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symbol was itself a symbol in the new Nazi government (see the discussion of symbols,

Hunt pp. 91-119). According to Hunt, creating and utilizing symbols is essential to a

revolutionary government’s quest for legitimacy (Hunt 91). The Nazis took the building

and turned it into a Gestapo headquarters and detention center, a symbol of control and

terror, to further humiliate the Jews.

Furthermore, according to both James Scott in Seeing Like a State, and Claudia

Koonz in The Nazi Conscience, one could view the takeover of buildings like these

throughout Germany as the government’s attempt to “improve the human condition”

(Scott 342). However, Scott argues, in part, that because of the way some governments

go about establishing their state (including the passage of laws, and construction/ma-

nipulation of the environment for the city) the project is doomed to fail, and the Nazi

example is no exception (Scott 342). One can interpret the Gestapo take-over of the

Jewish center as the Nazi’s attempt to gain “political control” of that part Berlin, which

was formerly a Jewish stronghold (Scott 203). Part of this attempt by the Nazis to

improve the human condition was the idea that Germans must rid the “Volk” of the

polluting influence of the Jews (Koonz Conscience 36-45). Koonz argues that the Nazis,

in their attempt to cleanse Germany, redefined ethics and morality, then set about trying

to convince the rest of Germany that the new ethics is the only correct ethics (Koonz 71-

79). Although this plan worked on the majority of the German population, as Koonz

demonstrates in her book, clearly the Germans who were married to Jews (and who did

not divorce them) were not convinced to participate in this new Nazi morality. Certainly,

the Germans who protested at Rosenstrasse were not convinced.

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Both Ian Kershaw in The Hitler Myth, and Joseph Goebbels, in his diary, indicate

that the Nazis depended on the active compliance of Germans for the success of the

Nazis. When Germans protested, aggressively and in large numbers, the Nazis backed

down or tried another tactic (see the discussion of the ‘euthanasia action’ below).

Goebbels indicated that the Final Roundup of the Jews was a “flop” and that he was

disappointed that there were still Jews “wandering around” freely in Germany, “posing a

huge danger to the public” (Goebbels, Document 5). He made it clear that the Final

Roundup of the Jews would have to wait until the German outcry died down, or until

some other German success distracted their attention from the Jewish question (Goebbels,

Document 5). Additionally, Goebbels lamented the lack of compliance on the part of the

intellectuals as one of the reasons that the Final Roundup was unsuccessful; he speculates

that the intellectuals had “betrayed prematurely” the Final Roundup plan, so that the Jews

had been forewarned, which probably contributed to the success of the protest at

Rosenstrasse (Goebbels, Document 5).

Furthermore, in The Hitler Myth, Ian Kershaw suggests that the Myth maintains

as long as the Nazis continue to deliver success; when the German army (and by

extension, Hitler himself) began to suffer defeat in the war, and could not deliver

successes as it had in the past, the tide of popularity and support for Hitler and the Nazis

began to decline (Kershaw 200-203). By 1943, many towns in Germany had already

suffered bombing raids; the German capitulation at Stalingrad in February of that year

“was the greatest single blow of the war” (Kershaw 201, 192-193). With the defeat of the

German army, the German population began to lose confidence in the Nazis, and Hitler

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began to lose his mythic standing. Moreover, according to Kershaw, many of the original

opponents of the Nazi regime took heart in this disastrous turn of events (Kershaw 194).

Perhaps timing has much to do with the success of the Rosenstrasse Protest, and

the subsequent lack of retribution for any of the protestors. One can only speculate

whether or not there would have been severe consequences if this sort of protest had

taken place earlier than March 1943 when the Nazis were at the height of their power.

However it is worth mentioning again that the German women who participated in this

protest in March of 1943 were veteran resisters of the Nazi regime, having remained

married to their Jewish spouses rather than divorcing them after the passage of the

Nuremberg Laws, as the new Laws instructed them to do (Stoltzfus xxviii). But even

further, one can only speculate whether or not this sort of protest would have happened at

all prior to the decline in popularity of the Nazis and the German retreat from Stalingrad.

It is clear, however, that Goebbels and the Nazis were concerned enough with public

opinion that the issue of deporting the Jews married to pure Germans was a great concern

all throughout the early 1940s (Stoltzfus 259-265). Deportation of the Mischlinge Jews

was a delicate matter and Goebbels wanted to be sure that the action was taken at just the

right time to ensure as little resistance (and as little support of resisters), as possible

(Stoltzfus 259).

Another instance of a successful protest against the Nazi regime was the

“euthanasia action” that ultimately forced the Nazis to alter their policy (Kershaw 176-

177). When it became clear to the regime that Germans were unhappy with this action,

and there was open protest, the regime backtracked on its policy so that the public would

not turn their backs on the regime. In fact, according to Kershaw, the Propaganda

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Ministry started a false rumor that Hitler halted the euthanasia project when he

discovered that it had been ordered, because the regime wanted to protect the public’s

opinion of Hitler (Kershaw 177). In any event, the point is that the success of the regime

was contingent upon its positive reception in the greater community and acceptance by

the German citizens. If public opinion faltered, it was imperative that something was

done to ensure the public’s support. Therefore, in addition to the successful Rosenstrasse

protest, the euthanasia protest was equally successful in that the Germans forced the

regime’s hand.

The Rosenstrasse protest was one of a very few successful, public and open

incidents of organized protest of the Nazi regime. One of the reasons that it was so

successful was the fact that it affected pureblood Germans; the fact that Germans

protested to change unjust policies was crucial to the regime relenting and finally

releasing the detained Jews. Another factor in the success of the protest was its timing.

Since the public display of displeasure came at a time when confidence in the regime was

at a severe low (Hitler was losing the war), the Gestapo did not want to threaten their

already insecure standing with the public. Although it is pointless to speculate about

whether more could have been done to hinder or change altogether some of the more

inhumane and unjust policies of the Nazi regime, it is clear from the Rosenstrasse protest

that when Germans stood united and unwavering in their displeasure, and publicly and

openly protested against Nazi policies, they succeeded in thwarting the regime.

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Works Cited

Andreas-Friedrich, Ruth. Document 4: Excerpts from the journal entries of Ruth

Andreas-Friedrich, Der Schattenmann, Berlin 1947, p. 108-110.

http://www.topographie.de/en/ros_4.htm.

Cohn, Siegfried. Document 3: Excerpts from the recollections of the Jewish worker,

Cohn, quoted in Die Juden in Deutschland 1933-1945, Munich 1989, p. 593f.

http://www.topographie.de/en/ros_3.htm.

Goebbels, Joseph. Document 5: Journal entries of Goebbels, quoted from Die

Tagebucher von Joseph Goebbels, Munich, u.a. 1993, p. 369, 449, 528.

http://www.topographie.de/en/ros_5.htm.

Grossman, Hans. Document 1: Excerpts from the recollections of the Jewish factory

worker, quoted from Gernot Jochheim, Frauenprotest in der Rosenstrasse, Berlin

1993, p. 122f. http://www.topographie.de/en/ros_1.htm.

Hunt, Lynn. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution. Berkeley: University

of California Press, 1984, 2004.

Israel, Charlotte. Document 2: Excerpts from the Recollections of Charlotte Israel,

quoted from Die Grunewald-Rampe, Berlin 1993, p. 147.

http://www.topographie.de/en/ros_2.htm.

Kershaw, Ian. The ‘Hitler Myth:’ Image and Reality in the Third Reich. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1987.

Koonz, Claudia. Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics. New

York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.

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Koonz, Claudia. The Nazi Conscience. Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of

Harvard University Press, 2003.

Map of Berlin, 1943. http://www.topographie.de/en/rosen.htm

Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human

Condition Have Failed. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998.

Stoltzfus, Nathan. Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest

in Nazi Germany. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996.

Weber, Eugen. Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-

1914. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976.

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