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Ingeborg Hunzinger’s Block der Frauen, the memorial to the protest, beside Rosenstraße in Mitte. Photographed 2008.Niki Sublime from Boston, USA, 2008. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

Rosenstraße · 1943

For a week in 1943, women stood in a Berlin street and demanded their Jewish husbands back. The men were released.

In the Gestapo’s last great roundup of Berlin’s Jews, the men with non-Jewish wives were held at Rosenstraße 2–4. Their families stood outside from 27 February 1943 to 6 March 1943. Historians still disagree about why the men were let go, and about how many people stood in the street.

~2,000
held at Rosenstraße 2–4; other counts run from 1,500 to 2,500
27 Feb – 6 Mar
the families outside, day and night
7,030
taken from Berlin to Auschwitz in the same week, 1 Mar – 6 Mar
25
sent from Rosenstraße to Auschwitz, then released within two weeks

01Rosenstraße, Mitte

One of Berlin’s oldest streets, bound up with its Jewish history, became a Gestapo holding pen

Berlin’s first synagogue stood at the corner of Rosenstraße and Heidereutergasse from 1714 until it was destroyed in the Second World War. Beside it, in 1905, the Jewish community put up its administration building, Rosenstraße 2–4.

By early 1943 most of Berlin’s Jews had been deported. Among those left were the Jews married to non-Jews, and their children: some 8,800 people in Berlin. At the Wannsee Conference in January 1942 the regime had put off acting against them until after the war was won.

A sepia photograph of a narrow old street with four- and five-storey houses and a wooden fence.
Rosenstraße seen from the Schmale Gasse in 1891, one of the oldest streets in Berlin.F. Albert Schwartz (1836–1906), 1891. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
A glass plaque printed with a historical photograph of a corner building and a block of German text.
The memorial plaque at Rosenstraße 2 for the social administration of the Jewish community, with the same photograph of the building.OTFW , Berlin, 2013. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

0227 February – 12 March 1943

In one week the Gestapo sent 7,030 people from Berlin to Auschwitz. The men in Rosenstraße were let go

The chart shows one fortnight, day by day, on one scale of people. Above the line are the trains to Auschwitz. Below it are the people held at Rosenstraße 2–4.

One fortnight, one scale of people

A day-by-day chart of the fortnight from 27 February to 12 March 1943, on one scale of people. Above the line, the five transports that took Berlin's Jews to Auschwitz from 1 to 6 March. Below it, the people held at Rosenstraße 2–4, the window in which they were released, and the 25 sent to Auschwitz. A yellow band marks the days the families stood outside.
Train to AuschwitzHeld at RosenstraßeBeing releasedFamilies outside
A long brass plate set into cobblestones, engraved in capitals with a German inscription about the Fabrikaktion.
Memorial threshold at a Fabrikaktion collection camp, Wedding.OTFW, Berlin, 2024. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

27 February 1943

The Fabrikaktion

Before dawn the Gestapo began seizing the Jews still working in Berlin’s factories: the Fabrikaktion, or “factory action”. The estimates run from 8,000 to 11,000 people arrested; the Topographie des Terrors gives about 10,000.

A red advertising column bearing a black-and-white photograph of a tall corner office building on a city street.
Rosenstraße 2–4 about 1936, shown on the street’s information column.Manfred Brückels, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

Rosenstraße 2–4

About 2,000 held in the community building

Jews married to non-Jews, and the sons of such marriages, were held apart at Rosenstraße 2–4: about 2,000, by the USHMM’s count. The district’s memorial text gives 1,500 to 2,500.

A quiet city street lined with trees and office buildings, a church spire at the end.
Rosenstraße today.Fridolin freudenfett, 2011. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

27 Feb – 6 Mar 1943

The families in the street

From the evening of 27 February wives, daughters and other relatives gathered outside and called for the men. Police cordoned off the building. The women stayed, even when threatened with lethal force, until 6 March 1943.

A bronze plaque with two columns of text, in German and English.
Burgstraße 28, home of the Berlin Gestapo’s department for Jewish affairs, 1941–45.OTFW , Berlin, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

1 Mar – 6 Mar 1943

7,030 people in five trains to Auschwitz

The other Jews seized were not released. In the same days, 7,030 people left Berlin for Auschwitz in five transports. Berlin’s Jewish register fell from 27,281 at the end of February to 18,515 at the end of March.

Two carved stone blocks standing in a snow-covered park in front of an apartment building.
The Block der Frauen, 2013.EliziR, 2013. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

1 Mar – 12 Mar 1943

The men are released

The Gestapo checked each prisoner’s papers. By the USHMM’s account it let the first go on 1 March 1943 and the last on 12 March 1943. The district’s texts say the releases began on 6 March 1943. No daily count survives.

A large monument of dark stone blocks at the end of a paved area, with memorial plaques laid in front.
The International Monument, Auschwitz II-Birkenau.Jorge Láscar from Australia, 2012. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.

March 1943

25 sent to Auschwitz, then released

25 of those held were sent to Auschwitz as protective-custody prisoners. According to Nathan Stoltzfus, within two weeks they too were released and sent to labour camps nearer Berlin.

03The numbers

Nobody counted the crowd. The estimates run from 150 to 6,000

No list of the prisoners and no count of the crowd survives in the sources used here. Each estimate below is drawn at its true value and labelled with its source. The two charts have different scales, but both start at zero.

How many were held at Rosenstraße 2–4

How many stood in the street

Gruner’s figure is as reported by Ulrich Kurzer in Der Freitag in 2003. Andreas-Friedrich wrote: “Sechstausend nichtjüdische Frauen drängten sich in der Rosenstraße” (“6,000 non-Jewish women crowded into Rosenstraße”). Gad Beck, who was held inside, thought her figure reasonable “not as the number protesting at one time, but as the sum total of all those who protested at one time or another”.

04The historians

Did the women free their husbands? Historians still disagree

The Bezirksamt Mitte leaves the question open: whether the protest alone led to the release, or other political calculations played a part. The two main readings are these.

The protest worked

Nathan Stoltzfus, Resistance of the Heart (1996) and later

The Gestapo meant to deport the men. The women’s protest, in the capital, weeks after Stalingrad, forced the regime to back down: Goebbels by March 6 ordered the release of intermarried Jews because of them.

They were never meant to go

Wolf Gruner, Widerstand in der Rosenstraße (2005); the USHMM

Gruner points to an order of the Gestapo in Frankfurt an der Oder dated 24 February 1943: Jews in mixed marriages seized in the Fabrikaktion were lediglich erfasst und anschließend "in ihre Wohnung" entlassen werden, only to be registered and then sent home. The USHMM agrees: In fact, the Gestapo never intended to deport "mixed-marriage" Jews and fully intended to incarcerate these Jews in forced-labor camps in the Reich.

Neither reading takes away from the women. The USHMM, which doubts that the protest changed the outcome, writes that they could not know the Gestapo’s plans, and that “nothing detracts from the courage of those women”. Showing friendship to Jews in public had carried a threat of three months’ “protective custody” since 1941.

05After the week

Release was not the end of it

The men were not free for long. German police came back for the released men and teenage boys the day after their release, and sent them to forced labour in Berlin and elsewhere. Gad Beck was among those held at Rosenstraße: “He was detained there until March 6, when the group was released following a demonstration.”

Other Jews from mixed marriages were held at the old people’s home in Große Hamburger Straße 26. The Gestapo office that ran the deportations was a few minutes away, in Burgstraße.

Two elderly men standing on a stage in front of a purple curtain.
Gad Beck (left), held at Rosenstraße until 6 March 1943, with Pierre Seel in Berlin in 2000.James Steakley, 2000. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.
A group of bronze figures on a low plinth in a gravelled square, with a wall and trees behind.
The memorial on the site of the Jewish old people’s home at Große Hamburger Straße 26, where other Jews from mixed marriages seized in the Fabrikaktion were held.Beek100, 2009. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Two blocks of reddish stone carved with figures of women, men and children, standing on gravel among trees.
The Block der Frauen: on the right, the men released and the families together again.Niki Sublime from Boston, USA, 2008. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.
Portrait of an elderly woman with white hair, smiling, in front of green leaves.
Ingeborg Hunzinger (1915–2009), who made the Block der Frauen, at home in Berlin-Rahnsdorf, 2008.Rengha Rodewill, 2008. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.

The memorial in the park beside the street is the work of Ingeborg Hunzinger (1915–2009), a communist and the daughter of a Jewish mother. It was set up in 1995. On the left, women wait and call out; in the middle, two women hold each other up; on the right, the families meet again.

GEBT UNS UNSERE MÄNNER WIEDER“GIVE US BACK OUR MEN”: one of the lines carved on the memorial

In the week the families stood in Rosenstraße, 7,030 Jews were taken from Berlin to Auschwitz.

The men held in the building their wives stood outside came home.

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{{cite web |title=Rosenstraße, 1943 |url=https://berlinfographics.com/rosenstrasse-1943/ |website=Berlinfographics |publisher=Berlin Experiences |date=2026-11-09 |access-date=2026-11-09}}