Mixed marriages under the Nazis

Though my own mother's family fled Berlin shortly after Hitler came to power, it was still a surprise when I first learned that Jews married to Gentiles continued to live in the city until very close to the end of the war. I confess that I have not had time to look deeper into the Nazi treatment of these mixed marriages, but as a rule, when one runs across a historical fact that doesn't seem to fit, it is one that bears further investigation. Rather than shunting aside the inconvenient fact, it's time to reassess one's idea of the big picture -- in this case, the balance of power between the German people and the Nazi state.

And now, from Munich, courtesy of Expatica.com:

Shooting has wrapped on director Margarethe von Trotta's film Rosenstrasse based on the true story of German women married to Jews whose public protest during Hitler's Third Reich saved their husbands from deportation to Nazi death camps. . .

The movie derives its name from Rosenstrasse 2-4, a Jewish community centre in Berlin where Jewish men married to non-Jews were imprisoned beginning on 27 February 1943.

The little-known chapter in Nazi German history was described in historian Nathan Stolzfus' book Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany.

Led mostly by women, the center was the site of the protest by the men's wives.

The protest grew from only two or three women until it at one point weeks later reached up to 6,000 women who faced down Nazi security forces and demanded back their husbands.

Rather than inviting more open dissent by shooting down the women in the streets, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels with Hitler's agreement released the men.

Almost all of them survived the war, including 25 who were recalled after already being sent to Auschwitz.

Posted by David on January 15, 2003 4:38 PM