An event buried in the past is resurrected here to shed light on
the nature and character of the Nazi regime, the Holocaust, and the
German people themselves. Unknown except to specialists in the
field of Holocaust studies, the Rosenstrasse protest occurred in
February 1943, when the SS and Gestapo launched the Final Roundup
of the Jews in Berlin. While some 10,000 were arrested and most
immediately sent to their deaths at Auschwitz, approximately 2,000
were brought to Rosenstrasse in the center of Berlin. These were
Jews - mostly men - married to non-Jews. Consequently, there was
some confusion over their status as prisoners. As word spread
through Berlin of the final roundup and the detention at
Rosenstrasse, hundreds of women converged on the street and
demanded that Nazi officials release their loved ones. Despite
assaults by the SS and the police, the demonstrations continued for
a week; even Radio London broadcast information on the unfolding
developments. Finally, the men were released. What happened to
these Jews, and what it reveals about the larger issues of power,
compromise, and propaganda, make for an interesting study of the
Third Reich. Stoltzfus (History/Florida State Univ.) skillfully
combines larger historical themes with the minute and powerful
recollections of participants and eyewitnesses. Based on dozens of
interviews with survivors, the work forces us to reconsider aspects
of Holocaust history. As the last chapter so tellingly asks: What
possibility was there for protest, rescue, or resistance within the
Third Reich, and why did some people undertake those actions while
others fell silent and did nothing? An important work that refracts
larger political issues and ethical questions through the prism of
a unique event: a heroic stand against the Nazi regime. (Kirkus
Reviews)
"The Rosenstrasse protest . . . shows that a great number, probably
a great majority . . . of the Aryan partners in mixed marriages did
not forsake their Jewish spouses, despite often overwhelming
pressures to do so. . . . What happened in this small and ordinary
Berlin street was an extraordinary manifestation of courage at a
time when such courage was often sadly absent."-from the foreword
by Walter Laqueur "Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners
created a furor with his sweeping and sensational claim that
'ordinary Germans' in Hitler's Reich were anti-Semites who had been
longing for decades for the chance to kill the Jews. This timely
new book by another young American historian presents another side
to the picture. Stoltzfus is a careful and subtle historian and the
result of his labors is no less sensational and
thought-provoking."-Richard J. Evans, The Sunday Telegraph In
February 1943 the Gestapo arrested approximately 10,000 Jews
remaining in Berlin. Most died at Auschwitz. Two thousand of those
Jews, however, had non-Jewish partners and were locked into a
collection center on a street called Rosenstrasse. As news of the
surprise arrest pulsed through the city, hundreds of Gentile
spouses, mostly women, hurried to the Rosenstrasse in protest. A
chant broke out: "Give us our husbands back." Over the course of a
week protesters vied with the Gestapo for control of the street.
Now and again armed SS guards sent the women scrambling for cover
with threats that they would shoot. After a week the Gestapo
released these Jews, almost all of whom survived the war. The
Rosenstrasse Protest was the triumphant climax of ten years of
resistance by intermarried couples to Nazi efforts to destroy their
families. In fact, ninety-eight percent of German Jews who did not
go into hiding and who survived Nazism lived in mixed marriages.
Why did Hitler give in to the protesters? Using interviews with
survivors and thousands of Nazi records never before examined in
detail, Nathan Stoltzfus identifies the power of a special type of
resistance-the determination to risk one's own life for the life of
loved ones. A "resistance of the heart." Nathan Stoltzfus teaches
history at Florida State University. Resistance of the Heart won
the Fraenkel Prize of the Institute of Contemporary History and
Wiener Library and was selected as a "book of the year" by The New
Statesman.
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