Resistance of the Heart

Nathan Stoltzfus

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9780813529097
• eBook ISBN: 9780813586618
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: Social Sciences

In February 1943 the Gestapo arrested approximately 10, 000 Jews remaining in Berlin. Most died at Auschwitz. Two thousand of those Jews, however, had non-Jewish partners and were locked into a collection center on a street called Rosenstrasse. As news of the surprise arrest pulsed through the city, hundreds of Gentile spouses, mostly women, hurried to the Rosenstrasse in protest. A chant broke out: "Give us our husbands back."

Over the course of a week protesters vied with the Gestapo for control of the street. Now and again armed SS guards sent the women scrambling for cover with threats that they would shoot. After a week the Gestapo released these Jews, almost all of whom survived the war.

The Rosenstrasse Protest was the triumphant climax of ten years of resistance by intermarried couples to Nazi efforts to destroy their families. In fact, ninety-eight percent of German Jews who did not go into hiding and who survived Nazism lived in mixed marriages. Why did Hitler give in to the protesters? Using interviews with survivors and thousands of Nazi records never before examined in detail, Nathan Stoltzfus identifies the power of a special type of resistance--the determination to risk one's own life for the life of loved ones. A "resistance of the heart..."

Index

Abrahamsohn, Günther, 166, 184, 279–81, 330n, 353n

accommodation to Nazi norms, 44–49, 58–60, 65–75, 76–77, 277

—self-interest and opportunism in, 10–12, 96–97

—and success of Nazi regime, 4, 7, 13, 75, 258, 259, 261, 269

—see also collaboration; denunciations

“action to clear living space,” deportations of Jews as, 163–91

Adam, Uwe, 194

air-raid shelters:

—German, 124, 138–39

—Jewish, 126, 134–39

Allen, William Sheridan, 13–14, 308n

Allies, bombardment of Germany by, 134–39, 197, 224–26, 281, 337n

American Legation, 244

Angriff, Der, xxii

Animal Protection Association, 174

Anschluss (annexation of Austria), 89–90

anti-Jewish measures, see specific measures

anti-Semitism:

—baptism of Jews and, 71

—career incentives for, 96–97

—in Charlotte Israel’s family, 18, 21, 22, 26, 51, 52–53

—as core of Nazi ideology, 13, 96–97, 264

—early exposure of Rudi Holzer to, 32

—in Erika Lewine’s family, 62–63

—Hitler encouraged by church leaders on, 273

—Hitler’s political use of, 96–97

—Nazi party members held to “higher standard” of, 53–54

—in Northeim, 13–14

—in propaganda, xxii, xxiii, 38, 65–70, 80–81

—of Sankt Johann villagers, 30

—of shopkeepers, 76–77

—in Stürmerkasten portrayal of Jews, 80

—in Werner Goldberg’s family, 62

—see also Final Solution; Holocaust; Jewish Question

Arenberg, Dr., torture and death of, 235–37

Arendt, Hannah, 189, 190, 309n

armaments industry, German:

—Jews in, 205–6, 256

—protests against Jews in, 247, 346n

—women conscripted into, 196, 197–201

Army, German (Wehrmacht), 178–79

—in Battle of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Epigraphs
• Introduction
• I: Hitler’s Theory of Power
• II: Stories of Jewish-German Courtship
• III: The Politics of Race, Sex, and Marriage
• IV: Courage and Intermarriage
• V: Mischlinge: “A Particularly Unpleasant Occurrence”
• VI: Society versus Law: German-Jewish Families and Social Restraints on Hitler
• VII: Society and Law: German-Jewish Families and German Collaboration with Hitler
• VIII: Kristallnacht: Intermarriages and the Lessons of Pogrom
• IX: At War and at Home: Mischlinge in Hitler’s Army
• X: Racial Hygiene, Catholic Protest, and Noncompliance, 1939–41
• XI: The Star of David Decree: The Official Story and the Intermarried Experience
• XII: The Price of Compliance and the Destruction of Jews
• XIII: Plans to Clear the Reich of Jews—and the Obstacles of Women and “Total War”
• XIV: Courageous Women of Rosenstrasse
• XV: Protest, Rescue, and Resistance
• Epilogue
• Notes on Sources and Discovery
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Index