The Rosenstrasse Protests

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It's February 27, 1943 in Berlin, Germany. 44-year-old Julius Israel shivers in his thin jacket as he steps outside the gates of a large armaments factory. Once a tailor, Julius is now being forced to work on an assembly line, turning out weapons for the Nazi war machine. After his latest exhausting shift in the factory, Julius begins a long walk home to his wife, but he barely makes it ten yards. Before a tarp covered truck, skids to a halt in front of him, armed police jump out, and bark at Julius to get inside. Julius doesn't resist. During a volley of insults and slurs from the police, he climbs into the back of the truck, which then roars off down the street.

Julius has seen many others taken in raids like this ever since Adolf Hitler came to power, though he's never been the victim before. He is Jewish, but he's partly protected from the Nazis by his marriage. His wife is what race theorists call Aryan, and it's her status that has kept Julius out of concentration camps until today. Sitting next to him in the back of the truck, Julius recognizes other intermarried men like him, and as the vehicle rumbles down the streets of Berlin, Julius grows terrifying that the fragile protection their marriages have afforded them, his finally at an end.

“Julius' Israel is right to be worried. Regardless of their marriage status, all Jews are now marked for removal from Germany, and are being sent to concentration camps as part of Adolf Hitler's final solution.”

But not everyone in Berlin will stand aside, and let Hitler and his followers erase the city's Jewish population. A protest movement, the first of its kind, will begin just hours after Julius' Israel and other men were arrested on February 27, 1943.

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Yet the cost in those tests of Shopify.com.de. From Noiser in Airship, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is Historydaly. History is made every day. On this podcast, every day, we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world. Today is February 27, 1943, the Rosenstraße protests.

“It's February 27, 1943 in Berlin, Germany, an hour after Julius Israel was rounded up by the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police force.”

In the small kitchen of her townhouse, 32-year-old Charlotte Israel stares at two dinner plates of boil potatoes and cabbage that are now growing cold. Her husband Julius should have been home by now in her heart races with anxiety. Eventually Charlotte can't take it anymore. So leaving the food on the table, she exits her front door and crosses the street to the grocery store opposite her home.

But when Charlotte asks the shopkeeper just shakes his head, he hasn't heard a thing.

“On shore of what to do, Charlotte returns home but finds she can't relax, her eyes constantly checked the door for any side of her husband, who she loves deeply.”

Many might think Charlotte and Julius are an unlikely couple. Charlotte is blonde, tall and athletic, a perfect specimen of the Aryan race of Nazi propaganda. But her husband Julius is the opposite.

Stricing by polio as a child, Julius is a foot shorter than his wife and has always been sickly, but what he lacks in physical strength he makes off for in creativity.

His musical talent was evident even in childhood, and when he grew up, he moved to Berlin where he taught piano before opening a tailoring shop. He hired Charlotte as an assistant and the two fell in love. Despite Charlotte's mother's fierce opposition to the idea of a Jewish son-in-law, Charlotte and Julius got married in 1933. But that very same year, Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, and once he sees power, his cruel anti-Semitism became official state policy. In September, 1935, Nazi Germany passed the Nuremberg laws, which deprived Jews of German citizenship and barred marriages between Jews and non-Jews.

But Jews who were already married to German men or women received some protection, the Nazi regime was cautious about antagonizing non-Jewish Germans.

“What has Charlotte and Julius' Jewish friends in Berlin either fled or were rounded up by authorities, the couple lived in growing fear that the rules would be changed, and Julius would be left in danger.”

Now it seems their worst fears have been realized. Charlotte has soon joined at home by a neighbor, the wife of another Jewish man, and she tells Charlotte that both their husbands have recently been arrested by the Gestapo. Charlotte grabs onto the kitchen counter as a wave of knowledge of floods through her. The neighbor goes on to tell Charlotte that their husbands have been taken to a building on Rosenstrasse. Both women are familiar with it, it's a four-story townhouse that was once a community center.

More recently, though, the Nazis have used the building to detain Jews ahead of deportation. Fearing for her husband, Charlotte immediately leaves her home and heads for Rosenstrasse. When she arrives, she finds there's already a crowd of other women outside the townhouse and Charlotte recognizes many of them.

“Like her, they want answers, they want to know what's happened to their husbands.”

But the women receive no answers from the guards standing outside, instead they're ordered to disperse at once.

What Charlotte knows if she abandoned Julius now, she may never see him again.

So thinking on her feet, she pushes her way to the front of the crowd and desperately pleads with a guard for her husband's ration card. She says that without that, her family will starve. It's a ruse to check whether Julius inside and still alive. A few minutes later, the guard returns with the ration card. And scratch lightly on the back or the words, "I'm fine."

Charlotte breathes a sigh of relief because Julius is safe for now. But her example encourages other women to confront the guards, too. And despite louder and louder calls for them all to return to their homes, the women stand firm. They're not going anywhere without their husbands. Such acts of defiance are almost unheard of in Nazi Germany.

Normally, descent would be met with rapid and brutal violence. But since the guards are facing German women, they're unsure what they should do. And soon, this standoff will grow into a prolonged public protest. For Nazi officials in Berlin, it will be an embarrassing thorn in their side. Before the women and their detained husbands, it will be a matter of life and death.

The first time in the world, the first time in the world, the first time in the world. The first time in the world, the first time in the world, the first time in the world. It's March 6, 1943 in Berlin, Germany. Eight days after Julius Israel and other Jewish men were rounded up by Nazi authorities. From the safety of his chauffeur, driven corps, German propaganda minister, Joseph Gerbel's, peers along the street, watching with his dark and calculating eyes as hundreds of women and children protest outside number two Rosenstrausen.

They repeat the same chant over and over, "Give us our husbands back." There's no violence on display, there's not a hint that the women will try to push past that guards or storm the building. But Gerbel still doesn't like what he sees. For him, the most remarkable and worrying aspect of this protest is the sheer number of people daring to take part. It isn't just the wives or family members of those detained inside the Rosenstrausen building, but their friends and neighbors too, even pastors by have joined in.

The guards standing outside the townhouse occasionally managed to clear the protesters, but it never lasts.

After only a few moments, Gerbel's gestures impatiently to his driver, he's seen enough. Deep and thought, he's taken back to his office on the other side of Berlin. If he can't stop this protest, he needs to think of a way to spin it. As Minister of Propaganda, it's Gerbel's job to maintain the German people's morale and keep them in line through a constant diet of misinformation. And by dehumanizing the Jewish people, he's created conditions where most Berliners don't bat an eyelid at the deportations of their former neighbors, co-workers and friends.

But the so-called mixed marriages between Jews and non-Jews have always been problematic.

Over the years, there's been huge social pressure on Germans married to Jews to divorce their partners in many half. But by 1943, if someone has stayed loyal to their partner for this long, then no amount of propaganda will convince them to turn on their loved ones now.

“That's what makes this protest so difficult for Gerbel's, and it's just one of many growing problems.”

The tide of the war is turning against Germany. On the eastern front, the 6th Army has surrendered to the Soviets at Stalingrad after taking staggering losses. In North Africa, German forces and their Italian allies are being pushed back by the British and Americans. And the fighting is increasingly coming to Germany itself with the capital Berlin suffering attacks by Allied bombers. The last thing Gerbel's needs now is for a protest by women in Berlin to continue or even to spread. So back in his office, Gerbel's tries his best to twist the events taking place in Rosenstrasse.

Using all the power of the state media, he starts spreading the lie that the protests have nothing to do with detain Jewish men at all.

He plans a story that they are, in fact, just the people of Berlin taking to the streets to show their defiance at the British bombers who dare to attack the capital of the Third Reich.

“Gerbel's himself then takes to the radio to call for greater commitment to the war from the German people and to reiterate that they can only be victorious over the Allies if the country's entire Jewish population is removed.”

But despite all Gerbel's efforts to undermine the protest, it continues day after day. Some in the German government suggest ignoring the women and deporting the men to concentration camps anyway. But Gerbel's fears that this will start to riot, others such as SS Commander Heinrich Hymler, favor ending the protest violently by simply shooting the women. But Gerbel's argue strongly against this too.

There's no way even the Nazis could massacre hundreds of German women in the heart of the capital without the news getting out.

Gerbel's beliefs that such an act would be devastating to the already fragile German morale and would shatter his carefully constructed image of a united people fighting for total victory together. But Gerbel's can't just do nothing.

“The protests themselves are damaging to morale and Adolf Hitler has made it clear that he wants all Jews to be deported and sent to camps without delay and without exception.”

Gerbel's nose something must be done and quickly. The longer these protests go on the more they will spread, but if he can't remove the protesters and he can't deport their husbands, it will soon be only one thing left he can do. It's March 6, 1943 in Berlin, Germany, just over a week after the start of the protests on Rosenstraße. The crowd outside the townhouse is now larger than ever. Among them still is Charlotte Israel. She knows her husband Julius is somewhere in the building in front of her and she's not leaving until he's free.

Stamping her foot and pumping her fist in the air, Charlotte continues the chant that has reverberated around this street in Berlin for the past eight days, give us our husbands back. Then, suddenly, without warning the doors of the townhouse swing open and two soldiers step out, Charlotte recognizes them. After days of protests there familiar faces, but today the soldiers are carrying something, a large machine gun. The men begin mounting the weapon on the ground and front of the crowd, or a screams of fear, but after a few moments, that terror turns to rage.

Charlotte and her fellow protesters begin to shout louder and louder, pushing back against the barrier between them and the armed men. But now, instead of chanting, give us our husbands back, the women begin to shout murderers, murderers, guards yell back at them, telling them if the women don't move right now, they will open fire. But this threat only enrages Charlotte and the others further. They continue to scream murderers, murderers, over and over again, with such fury that the soldiers don't know what to do.

They make a show of loading their weapons, but the women can see the soldiers' hearts aren't in it.

He's just been informed by Joseph Gerbels that the Jewish men held in Rosenstraße are to be released.

“This is how Gerbels has decided to solve the problem of the protests by giving in to them.”

There are tears of joy and relief among the crowd as they realize what's happening that they've won.

And later that day, the Gestapo begin to free the prisoners. It takes several weeks, but eventually all 1800 men, including Julius Israel, are released back to their wives.

“The protests end and Joseph Gerbels is forced to be content that they did not spread further, but his attempt to preserve German morale doesn't change the course of World War II.”

The Nazi regime is doomed, but the horrifying extent of the crimes discovered in concentration camps like Auschwitz will only be revealed with the defeat of Germany in 1945.

By then, the ruthlessly organized brutality of Adolf Hitler's final solution will have taken the lives of millions, but there will also be more than a thousand men in Berlin who survived the Holocaust.

“Thanks to the courageous protests led by their wives, protest that began on February 27, 1943.”

Next on History Daily, March 2, 1939, as Europe edges toward war, the Vatican elects Pope Pius XII, whose wartime silence will divide historians for decades. From Noiser and Aresha, this is History Daily, hosted edited and executed produced by me, Lindsey Graham. Audio editing by Mohammad Shazid, sound designed by Molly Bonne, our supervising sound designer is Matthew Filme, music by Throne. This episode is written and researched by Owen Paul Nichols, edited by Dorian Marie, managing producer is Emily Burke.

Executive producers are William Simpson for Aresha and Pascal Hughes for Noiser. [BLANK_AUDIO]