The Factory Action and the Events at the Rosenstrasse in Berlin: Facts and Fictions about 27 February 1943 — Sixty Years Later

In: Central European history, Band 36, Heft 2, S. 179-208

Abstract

On 27 February 1943 in Nazi Germany the Gestapo brutally arrested more than ten thousand Jewish men and women. Martin Riesenburger, later the Chief Rabbi of the German Democratic Republic, recalled that day as "the great inferno." This large-scale raid marked the beginning of the final phase of the mass deportations, which had been under way since October 1941. Also interned in Berlin were people who, according to NS terminology, lived in so-called mixed marriages. But new documents show that no deportation of this special group was planned by the Gestapo. In the past decade, in both the German as well as the American public, quite a bit of attention has been paid to the fact that non-Jewish relatives publicly demonstrated against the feared deportation of their Jewish partners. The scholarly literature as well has pictured this protest as a unique act of resistance that prevented the deportation of these Jews living in mixed marriages. The fact that during this raid an untold number of Jews, both women and men, fled and went underground has so far been ignored. Since we still know much too little, the following article will discuss all the events of the spring of 1943 and their background.