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Source: http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Rosenstrasse-at-75-543522
Remembering the 2,000 Berlin Jews Saved by German Women
(Jerusalem Post) Nathan Stoltzfus and Mordechai Paldiel - 75 years ago, in February and March 1943, hundreds of German women rescued 2,000 Jews, their husbands, from the jaws of death with a daring protest on Berlin's Rosenstrasse. They gathered there for more than a week, in spite of repeated commands by the authorities to "clear the streets or we'll shoot." The Nuremberg Laws of September 1935 criminalized sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews as "racial defilement." Following the Kristallnacht pogrom of November 1938, the Gestapo began a campaign to threaten and cajole non-Jewish German women married to Jews into getting a divorce. As soon as the non-Jewish partners agreed to divorce, the Gestapo deported the Jewish former spouses. Beginning on Feb. 27, 1943, the Gestapo imprisoned nearly 2,000 intermarried Jews in a pre-transportation facility at Rosenstrasse, as part of the final roundup of Berlin Jews. Hitler conceded, temporarily, to the brave women on Rosenstrasse. He "temporarily" exempted all intermarried Jews from genocide. To honor the Rosenstrasse women protesters, the German consulate in New York commemorated this event on Feb. 27. Nathan Stoltzfus is Professor of Holocaust Studies at Florida State University. Mordecai Paldiel, of Yeshiva University, is former director of the Department of the Righteous at Yad Vashem.