Rosenstrasse redux

We commented back in January on the film Rosenstrasse, dealing with the 1943 episode in Berlin in which German women faced down Nazi guards to gain the freedom of their Jewish husbands.

The film has proven quite controversial, as this Times article notes:

Gisela Miessner, full of anger and swirling memories, is ready to talk. The doughty 78-year-old Berliner is one of the last surviving participants in an extraordinary revolt against Nazi power: the Rosenstrasse protest, in which thousands of ordinary German women forced Hitler to back down and release their Jewish husbands and fathers.

Now, as controversy flares over the 1943 rebellion, Frau Miessner is distressed to learn that her bravery may have counted for nothing.

A new film has cast doubt on the significance of the rebels and their act of defiance. Rosenstrasse, which won honours at the Venice Film Festival, contends that Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, allowed the men to walk free only after one of the Rosenstrasse women, an aristocratic piano-player married to a Jewish violinist, agreed to a one-night stand with him. “I just don’t believe it!” Frau Miessner says, displaying the raw energy that gave her the strength to face down the machineguns of the SS. Yet the question lingers: is she a newly discovered wartime heroine or an accidental bystander, a historical footnote? . . .

The film has proved popular with audiences, but academics urge caution. Among the fiercest critics is Wolfgang Benz, the respected historian. Goebbels, he said, had nothing to do with the decision to free the prisoners; it was not in his jurisdiction. In any case, the prisoners were never destined for the gas chambers. They were being held with the aim of being used as a reserve labour unit, to fill the gap left by other deported Jews.

There had been no change of policy: Hitler was still ready to give a measure of protection to Jews with German wives. “That does not reduce the astonishing courage of the women,” Professor Benz says. . .

Historical accounts of the Second World War have mostly ignored the Rosenstrasse episode. East Germans prefer to emphasise communist resistance to Hitler; West Germans were embarrassed by the moral questions opened up by the female protest. Why did not more members of the civilian population revolt? Only now has Rosenstrasse returned to centre-stage, and scratched open a few wounds.

Posted by David on September 27, 2003 7:39 PM