International Women's Day 2025

The Rosenstraße protest, one of the few demonstrations carried out by German civilians against the Nazi regime, is known as the only instance of such a protest achieving its goal. Over the course of a week, from February 27 to March 6, 1943, German women held a vigil outside the Jewish community office on Rosenstraße, where their Jewish husbands were being held. In a rare and remarkable turn of events, their protest ultimately led to their husbands’ release.
 

Although the Nazis' Final Solution was already well underway, intermarried Jews had, until February 1943, largely been spared from the mass deportations of Germany’s Jewish population and were granted a "special status." While intermarried Jews were targeted and often arrested on various pretexts, these arrests were not yet part of systematic, large-scale deportations. The Nazi leadership was reluctant to draw attention to what they considered the “problem of mixed marriages,” a continuous source of embarrassment;[1] fearing backlash from their Aryan relatives, deportation of Jews from mixed families was temporarily postponed.[2]

In early 1943, however, the Nazis launched a large-scale operation to deport the remainder of German Jewry. As part of this effort, a decision was made to deport as many intermarried Jews as possible without drawing attention. In his diary, Joseph Goebbels, the Gauleiter of Berlin, wrote of his intention to “cleanse his city of Jews,” declaring that all Jews wearing the yellow star—including those from intermarried families—should be deported. His goal was to have all Jews in Berlin detained in holding centres by the end of February and from there deported, in groups of up to 2,000 per day, to labour and extermination camps. “I have set myself the goal,” he wrote, “to make Berlin entirely free of Jews by the middle or end of March at the latest.”[3]

On February 27 and 28, 1943, approximately 10,000 Jews were arrested in Berlin. Among them were about 2,000 intermarried Jews and those born of such marriages. While most were sent to Auschwitz almost immediately, the Jews from mixed families were imprisoned in the Jewish community office on Rosenstraße. Most of them were Jewish men whose German wives arrived at the site to inquire about their fate—some as early as the evening of February 27. By the following morning, their voices could be heard calling out in unison for their husbands' release.[4]

List of participants in the Rosenstraße Protest and resistance against deportations, from the Wiener Archive collection, Alfred Wiener Documents, Resistance in Germany, 600-2a.

The protests outside the building continued for a full week, with police repeatedly attempting to disperse the crowds, at times threatening to open fire.[5] On March 4, an order was issued to release all detainees with Jewish ancestry who were Catholic. At the same time, arrests continued, and on March 6, 25 intermarried Jewish men—selected because they had no children—were deported to Auschwitz.[6] After twelve days in Auschwitz-Monowitz, however, they were sent back to Berlin, where they were promptly rearrested and sent to forced labour camps near the city.[7]

Hundreds of women took part in the Rosenstraße protest, and the Nazis' attempt to quietly deport intermarried Jews ultimately failed. The events brought public attention to the existence of thousands of intermarried couples in the capital, and news of the protest spread throughout Germany and beyond. On March 6, Goebbels ordered the release of the remaining detainees, and already at the time it was claimed that the protest had played a decisive role in his decision.[8] However, there is still historical debate over the true impact of the demonstrations, with some arguing that deportation to the east never was the intended goal of the arrests.[9]

Although most of the men released from Rosenstraße were later rearrested and sent to forced labor camps, this rare instance in which non-Jewish women insisted on their Jewish husbands' safety, in the face of real danger, remains a powerful image and an important narrative of resistance in the Third Reich.[10]

Today, on Rosenstraße where the building once stood, there is a commemorative column detailing the events. A short distance away, in a nearby park, stands the Block der Frauen (Block of Women), also known as the Aryan Women’s Memorial—a sculpture by East German artist Ingeborg Hunzinger commemorating the women’s protest.

The Wiener Library collection includes an index of names of men and women involved in the protest, information on their fates, and testimonies from participants.