The Rosenstrasse protest in Berlin

2nd March 1943:An extraordinary public protest against the detention of Jews in central Berlin causes the Nazis to back track, at least temporarily

Mar 2

"Whoever wears this sign is an enemy of our people". Jews married to non-Jews were still required to wear the Judenstern.

Man with Jewish star, September 1941 (place unknown, possibly Berlin).

The Nazi racial laws which targeted the Jews of Germany for discrimination and eventually murder were not always straightforward to apply. Exceptions were made for Jews who have served in the German military in the First World War, for those who were not wholly of 'Jewish blood' and for those who had been married to non-Jewish 'Aryan' partners before the introduction of the laws. These cases required individual decisions to be made.

A chart explaining the effect of the 1935 Nuremberg Race Laws. Only people with four non-Jewish German grandparents (four white circles in top row left) were of "German blood". A Jew was defined by the Nazis as someone who descended from three or four Jewish grandparents (black circles in top row right). In the middle stood people of "mixed blood" of the "first or second degree.

I gave the order to the SD [Gestapo], the evacuation of the Jews is not to continue, we need to be more calculating at such a critical time. We can wait a few weeks, then we can carry on more thoroughly.

When the round-up of Berlin Jews started on the 27th February, a large group of men who claimed some form of privilege were separated from those immediately bound for Auschwitz. They were detained at a building in Rose Street in Berlin while they were processed. It did not take long for their relatives to learn of this and a remarkable protest was soon organised.

Keep reading with a 7-day free trial

Subscribe to World War II Today to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.