Authors: Roger Moorhouse
the SS guards and threats to shoot sent the women scurrying into the
nearby side streets and alleyways for cover. Within minutes, they would
be back on the pavement, continuing their noisy protest. As Ruth
Andreas-Friedrich put it, the women at Rosenstrasse ‘called for their
husbands, screamed for their husbands, howled for their husbands,
and stood like a wall, hour after hour, night after night’.15
Then, after around a week, there was a change in fortunes. Slowly at
first, some of those imprisoned began to be released. On Friday 5 March,
the first inmates – primarily those ‘privileged’ Jews in mixed marriages
– were sent home. Over the subsequent days, others followed, with the
last of them being released up to two weeks after their initial arrest.16
Each of them was given a certificate, detailing their name, address and
occupation, and stating the date of their release from the ‘Rosenstrasse
collection camp’. Even the twenty-five ‘privileged’ individuals who had
already been deported to Auschwitz – apparently ‘mistakenly’ – were
swiftly returned to the capital.
The prisoners released from Rosenstrasse couldn’t believe their luck.
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Most of them would have expected to be deported and, though they
were ignorant of the precise workings of the Holocaust, they would
have known or suspected enough to have been profoundly concerned
for their lives. As one of the prisoners, Ernst Bukofzer, recalled:
When I left that house, equipped with my official release note . . . my
wife and both daughters were there, expecting me. They had already
been there for hours, patiently sticking it out, and led me home, glowing
with happiness. I was exhausted, as if a heavy burden had fallen from
my shoulders. There had indeed been hours when I had not expected
to return once again to the circle of my family.17
For many, however, the release must have seemed less a liberation
than a stay of execution. Ruth Gross’s father arrived home ‘exhausted,
hungry, tired and stubbly’ in the early morning of 6 March. But already
at 4.00 p.m. that same day, he had to attend an interview with the
local police and the following day he was obliged to report for his
next stint of forced labour – this time clearing buildings containing
unexploded bombs.18
The Rosenstrasse protest has been much discussed by historians in
recent years and has spawned two rival interpretations.19 Some argue that
the women’s protest on Rosenstrasse was instrumental in securing the
release of the prisoners and in saving them from certain death in the gas
chambers of Auschwitz. They believe that Goebbels, the SS and the Nazi
hierarchy ‘blinked’ when faced with the determined opposition of the
Rosenstrasse women. Unable to risk such open dissent, they stayed
their hand, thereby halting – albeit on a small scale – the apparently
unstoppable progress of the Holocaust.
Others take a rather more nuanced, if less romantic view. They
argue that the Rosenstrasse revolt, though heroic in itself, actually
had little effect on the progress of the Holocaust. They hold that the
inmates of Rosenstrasse were never actually scheduled for deport a-
tion, rather they were separated out from the remaining ‘full-Jews’
in the capital, while their identities and precise racial status were
checked. They were then to be used to replace the staff of the
remaining Jewish organisations in Berlin, who were almost all sched-
uled for imminent deportation.20 Thus one might see the Rosenstrasse
protest as a side show: a distraction from the more serious – and
against all odds
291
more deadly – operations then going on elsewhere. After all, while the
1,800 at Rosenstrasse were freed, the 8,000 or so held elsewhere that
week were all deported to Auschwitz, and the majority of those were
murdered immediately upon arrival.21
Whichever way one interprets the events on Rosenstrasse, it is clear
that it
was
a remarkable episode. But, while historians argue over
archival minutiae and precise chronologies, the most extraordinary
fact of all seems to be that mass, popular resistance erupted in 1943,
in the very heart of the Third Reich. The fact that many hundreds of
Berlin women dared to demonstrate openly against the deportation
of their Jewish sons, husbands and fathers – the only protest of its
kind in Nazi Germany – is little short of astonishing.
Yet another important consequence of the
Fabrik-Aktion
and the
Rosenstrasse revolt has traditionally been overlooked. Prior to that
final round-up of late February 1943, the remaining Jews in the German
capital could still convince themselves that the work they were doing
in the munitions factories and elsewhere was so vital to Nazi Germany
that they would effectively be spared the horrors of deportation. They
had bought their lives, they would have reasoned, by their hard labour.
For those Berlin Jews who had dared to entertain this opinion, the
Fabrik-Aktion
would have come as a shock. It would have become imme-
diately and brutally clear that they were not indispensable; their places
would be taken by Poles, French and Dutchmen, as well as by the more
‘privileged’ of their fellows, and they would be sent to meet their fate.
For Rachel Becker, whose father had been held in Rosenstrasse, it was
a sobering realisation: ‘All those who did not even want to believe the
strange rumours according to which the Jews, being ostensibly deported
for “resettlement” somewhere in the east . . . were not put to work but
[were put] to death, were suddenly shaken out of their complacency
and faced, at last, with the whole and cruel truth.’22 For some, there
was now only one alternative to boarding the cattle trucks bound for
Auschwitz: to ‘go underground’ and take their chances as fugitives
beneath the Aryan surface of Hitler’s capital.
It is easy to underestimate the enormity of the decision to ‘go under-
ground’ in wartime Berlin. For one thing, the so-called Jewish
Taucher
or ‘U-boats’, had no idea how long their underground odyssey would
last, or if it would ever end at all. Modern readers with the benefit
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berlin at war
of hindsight should not forget that the Third Reich was in the ascend -
ancy at least until the winter of 1942–3 and even after that point those
on the German home front often had little idea of the war’s progress.
For a Jew deciding to ‘dive’ in 1943, therefore, it was very much a leap
into an unknown and very forbidding future.
First of all, going underground in Nazi Germany was to break the
law. Becoming a fugitive involved removing the
Judenstern
and
discarding one’s papers; it implied a life on the run – lying, stealing,
cheating, doing anything to survive. And, despite everything they
had already endured, the majority of Jews – especially the older gener-
ation – found this an unnerving prospect. Like their Aryan fellows,
they were to a large degree wedded to the principles of civic obedi-
ence, and the implicit belief in the authority of the state and its organs.
In this regard, one must not forget that the deportation of German
Jewry bore the legitimate stamp of Nazi officialdom and was backed
by the necessary paragraphs of German law. Thus, many Berlin Jews
could not contemplate such a radical course of action and preferred
to comply with their deportation. After all, deportation was the only
certainty that many of them had left.
There were other factors that would complicate the decision to
flee. For a Jew, to become a ‘non-person’ was to leave behind one’s
own past. Previous residences – even whole areas of the capital –
would have to be routinely avoided. And though a few trusted friends
might be called upon to provide shelter, most former neighbours and
acquaintances would also have to be actively shunned by a
Taucher
for
fear that any contact might lead to betrayal and arrest.
In addition, the decision to go underground effectively meant giving
up on those friends and family who had already been deported. Though
many Jews had heard the rumours and feared the worst, they still
hoped that their direst imaginings might prove to be wide of the mark.
Making the leap into a life in the underground, therefore, often meant
a simultaneous acceptance that the rumours were true and that loved
ones would not be returning. It meant abandoning all that they held
dear.
Nonetheless, despite the drastic nature of the move, many went into
hiding, especially after the
Fabrik-Aktion
of spring 1943. It has been estim ated that around 10–12,000 Jews went underground in Germany over
the course of the war. Of these, the vast majority hid in the big cities,
against all odds
293
where anonymity was easier to maintain. Berlin, with its left-liberal
traditions and history of Jewish settlement, offered perhaps the greatest
opportunity for survival. Consequently, about half of all those Jews
braving the ‘dive’ into the underground – some 5–7,000 – are thought
to have done so in the capital.23
For those taking the plunge, there were a number of essential
survival tactics. The first step for any would-be fugitive was to remove
the hated
Judenstern
stitched to their clothing. For some, this act alone was something of a liberation, a way of celebrating their new identity. Yitzhak Schwersenz went underground in the late summer of
1942. Escaping his scheduled deportation, he travelled with a friend to
the semi-rural area of Pichelsberg, close to the Olympic Stadium.
There, the two of them removed the Jewish star and replaced it with
the insignia of the Nazi labour service, the
Deutsche Arbeitsfront
. As
Schwersenz recalled: ‘I left Berlin with the
Judenstern
and came back
with the swastika . . . After dark, I returned to Berlin alone and made
my first wander through the streets of the city, to get used to my new
“role” as a free, ordinary citizen.’24
For many it was imperative to change their appearance. For those
who were ‘blessed’ with Aryan looks – blue eyes and blond hair –
this was not an issue, but for the majority of Jews, some visual sleight
of hand was usually necessary, altering their looks, their hair colour,
even their style of dress.
Some went to greater lengths to forget, deny and expunge all traces
of their Jewishness, and to live as far as was possible as ‘Aryans’. One
young woman hiding in Pankow was advised by her aunt to ‘forget
that she was a Jew’.25 On the most basic level, this would involve
altering one’s whole demeanour, learning to walk tall once again, and
shaking off the hunted, mistrustful look that the years of persecution
had brought. One
Taucher
noted that one of the golden rules for under-
ground life was ‘never to look unkempt. An unshaven face or dirty
collar would always attract attention.’26 Regardless of the difficulties
of their predicament, therefore, fugitive Jews had to adopt a confi-
dent, ‘normal’ bearing in order to survive.
While there were many within the Jewish community of Berlin who
were willing to help fellow Jews, the scope of their activity was severely
limited. Nonetheless, some self-help organisations were formed, such
as
Chug Chaluzi
– the ‘Pioneer Circle’ – which was established in 1943
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berlin at war
in response to the
Fabrik-Aktion
. On one level, the Circle sought to
maintain some semblance of Jewish spiritual and cultural life, by visiting
theatres and concerts, or celebrating Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.27
Beyond that, it also offered practical help to fugitive Jews by exchanging
information and organising meals and lodgings. For the Circle’s
founders, its actions were a form of resistance: ‘We’re combating Hitler’,
they said, ‘with every life we save.’28
A few tried to be as independent as possible, seeking out abandoned
houses or garden sheds, frequenting the railway stations, or riding the
trains for as long as they could. The houseboats on Berlin’s lakes –
the Havelsee, Wannsee and Müggelsee – were also favourite hideouts
– and, as we have seen, so were some of the more elaborate tombs
of the capital’s cemeteries. Yet for all their valiant efforts at self-help,
Jewish
Taucher
were, in most cases, entirely reliant on Aryan helpers.
Indeed, it has been estimated that, on average, it took the coopera-
tion of seven Germans to help each fugitive Jew.29
Quite a number of Aryans in Berlin were willing to help Jews –
even to run the ultimate risk and hide Jewish refugees in their own
homes. Often, such assistance consisted of very modest gestures: the
sharing of ration coupons, for instance, or the donation of clothes.
One evening, two fugitive Jews arrived at Ursula von Kardorff’s door:
Yesterday at dusk the doorbell rang. Outside two figures, who haltingly