Webinar Series: Anniversaries in 2023

The year 2023 marks the 80th anniversary of the Rosenstrasse protests in Berlin and the first deportations of Sinti and Roma from Germany to Auschwitz; it is also the 90th anniversary of the boycott of Jewish-owned stores. In the first half of the year, the Education and Research Department organized a series of webinars.

Each of our three online programs addressed a single event in its historical context. We also used the materials and formats of the Memorial and Educational Site to demonstrate our educational approach when teaching these topics in schools and extracurricular settings. In conclusion, we discussed the current relevance of these events with the participants. 

 

1. Webinar on 23 February 2023: 80th Anniversary of the Protests on Rosenstrasse in February 1943   

Reported by Anna Stocker  

Dr. Akim Jah from the Arolsen Archives began his talk by explaining the events leading up to this protest. He described the Nazis’ plan to deport all Jews, including the so-called “Rüstungsjuden” (Jews working in armament factories) in late 1942/early 1943. To avoid a labor shortage, the deported workers were to be replaced by forced laborers from the Lublin region. 

The plan also called for “Mischlinge” (mixed-race Jews) and people in “mixed marriages” to perform the work of the Jewish community and to assist with the upcoming deportations. In the fall of 1942, 7,000 Jews were deported from Berlin. Alois Brunner became chief of the Berlin Gestapo at this time and it was under his leadership that the situation radicalized. Another wave of deportations took place in February 1943; approximately 8,000 Jews were arrested in Berlin alone. This wave of arrests throughout all of Germany became known as the “Factory Action.”   

During the action, 5,000-7,000 Jews managed to avoid arrest by going underground and hiding in Berlin. Men who lived in “mixed marriages” and “Mischlinge” were also arrested. Most of them were taken by the Gestapo and its helpers to the former administration building of the Jewish Community of Berlin at Rosenstrasse 2-4. Family members, mostly mothers and wives, gathered in front of the building and demanded the release of their men. Not long thereafter, the Gestapo successively began releasing the men. Akim Jah agrees with the thesis developed by the historian Wolf Gruner that it was not in fact the protests that led to the men’s release. Gruner argued that the Gestapo never intended to deport the men imprisoned at Rosenstrasse. The purpose of their arrest was simply to check their status.  

The participants engaged in a contentious discussion over how effective the protests ultimately were. It was generally agreed that the protests were unique and important. The nature of the protest also bears relevance for contemporary discourses in different educational contexts.  

In the next lecture, Svea Hammerle, a freelance employee at the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site, presented the educational materials we developed on a Jewish family from Berlin: The Story of the Chotzen Family. The family’s experience is used to show the different stages of persecution during the Nazi era. Because the Nazis defined the Chotzen children as “Mischlinge,” the material also draws attention to this rather unknown topic. The mother, Elsa Chotzen, also participated in the Rosenstrasse protests. The material includes photographs and comments from the family that demonstrate their grief and fear, as well as their humor. They also present the historical events from the perspective of people who were deeply affected by them. The collection was donated to the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site by family relatives. 

Further reading:  

  • Gruner, Wolf: Widerstand in der Rosenstraße, Frankfurt 2015.  
  • Jah, Akim: Die Deportation der Juden aus Berlin. Die nationalsozialistische Vernichtungspolitik und das Sammellager Große Hamburger Straße, Berlin 2013.  
  • Jochheim, Gernot: Frauenproteste in der Rosenstraße, Berlin 2002.  

2. Webinar on 23 March 2023: 80th Anniversary of the Start of the Systematic Deportations of Sinti and Roma from Germany to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp   

Reported by Dr. Jakob Müller  

Tobias von Borcke from the Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma in Heidelberg provided an introduction to the history of the persecution of Sinti and Roma, which began much earlier than 1943. He presented the example of Otto Rosenberg, an 11-year-old boy who had been interned in the Berlin-Marzahn forced labor camp on 16 July 1936. Other cities, such as Frankfurt am Main and Cologne, followed Berlin’s example. The provisions of the Nuremberg Laws were also applied to Sinti and Roma. The minority was monitored closely by the Criminal Police with the help of the Racial Hygiene Research Center, headed by the psychiatrist Robert Ritter. As part of their “crime prevention measures,” the Nazis began deporting Sinti and Roma to concentration camps in 1938. 

Tobias von Borcke used the biographies of Walter Winter and Elisabeth Guttenberger to illustrate the different ways people were affected by the persecution measures. Elisabeth Guttenberger was assaulted by fellow students, but also protected by a former member of the Reichstag who was a teacher at her school. Walter Winter was drafted into the Navy in 1940 and not discharged from the Wehrmacht until 1942. Walter Winter, Elisabeth Guttenberger and Otto Rosenberg were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the spring of 1943. This was preceded by an order issued by Heinrich Himmler on 16 December 1942, which became known as the “Auschwitz Decree.” Approximately 23,000 Sinti and Roma, primarily from the Reich area, were imprisoned in the “Gypsy Camp,” Section B II e in Birkenau; 19,300 of them were murdered there.   

The mass murder of Roma, however, had actually begun much earlier, primarily in Eastern Europe. With the invasion of the Soviet Union, German Einsatzgruppen began murdering the Roma along with the Jews. The largest group of German Sinti and Roma, however, was murdered in Birkenau. This is why the commemoration of the deportations that began in the spring of 1943 is especially important. 

Tobias von Borcke addressed the purpose of remembrance, drawing attention to possible “pitfalls.” He stressed the importance of recognizing the genocide of a group that still suffers from discrimination today. He pointed out that German Sinti and Roma’s socio-economic situation today is worse than it was before 1933. Most of the crimes remained unpunished after 1945 and the perpetrators frequently retained their positions in the Federal Republic. Tobias von Borcke discussed what he called a prevailing narrative of “crime prevention gone out of hand.” As late as 1956, the German Federal Supreme Court justified the persecution of Sinti and Roma on the basis of the minority’s alleged “antisocial characteristics.” The court also limited their compensation claims to the period after 1 March 1943, the decisive date for the implementation of Heinrich Himmler’s “Auschwitz Decree.” The German Sinti and Roma engaged in a long civil rights struggle before the murder of Sinti and Roma was officially recognized as a genocide in the Federal Republic under Helmut Schmidt’s government in 1982.  

Otto Rosenberg was the only one of eleven siblings to survive the war. He later became the first chairman of the State Association of German Sinti and Roma in Berlin-Brandenburg. Elisabeth Guttenberger and Walter Winter also survived. Guttenberger had been assigned to office work in Auschwitz. Her testimony was read aloud during the first Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial in 1965. Walter Winter waited a very long time before speaking about what he experienced under the Nazis. Most of the activists involved in the German Sinti and Roma civil rights movement were born after 1945. One reason the survivors remained silent for so long was their fear of being identified and suffering negative consequences. This fear is unfortunately well-founded since discrimination against Sinti and Roma continues to be a daily occurrence today, particularly in schools. Tobias von Borcke argued that this is why memorial sites need to be careful not to reinforce existing stereotypes by reproducing the images and texts of perpetrators. The people should not be shown solely as victims; they should also be appreciated as self-determining actors. Tobias von Borcke recommended as a positive example the brochure “Wir geben uns nicht in ihre Hände!” about the resistance of Sinti and Roma.

In the next lecture, our colleague Aya Zarfati discussed how deportation photographs are used in historical-political education. She presented the project “#last seen” as an example. The Arolsen Archives, in cooperation with the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site, developed a digital atlas of deportation photographs from the German Reich. A browser-based game of discovery was developed using three photographic series. Aya Zarfati presented the three guiding questions of “#last seen”:  

  1. How can we tell history from multiple perspectives?  
  2. What do we not know, if we do not want to know it?  
  3. How does society come to lack empathy?  

One challenge created by working with the photographs of deportations from Germany is that they were mostly taken by perpetrators – and in a few instances by bystanders. This has to be considered in educational work to avoid reproducing the mentality, logic and perspective of the perpetrators. Within the project, therefore, special care was taken to identify the people depicted in the photographs – both perpetrators and victims – and, in the case of the latter, to also show “counterimages,” such as private photographs.

3. Webinar 20 April 2023: 90th Anniversary of the “Boycott” of Jewish-owned Stores, Medical Practices and Legal Offices in April 1933   

Reported by Madlen Seidel  

Our colleague Dr. Christoph Kreutzmüller took a semantic and historiographical look at the events of April 1933 and called for a greater critical awareness regarding the term “boycott.” According to Christoph Kreutzmüller, the term suggests an act of civil protest. In this case, however, it was a state-sanctioned campaign of violence. The historian, therefore, argued instead for using the term “economic blockade” (wirtschaftliche Blockade).   

The violent events of April 1933 were preceded by a long history of antisemitic boycotts. As early as November 1923, when hyperinflation was at its highest, widespread anti-Jewish riots occurred in Berlin’s Scheunenviertel. These attacks mainly targeted Jews who had previously fled antisemitic pogroms in Eastern Europe. The anti-Jewish economic blockade of 1 April 1933, organized under Stürmer editor Julius Streicher, was a direct continuation of this history of violence. Christoph Kreutzmüller stressed how substantial the riots throughout the German Reich were: “Violence was everywhere.” Although many physical assaults were documented, the precise number of murders and injuries remains unknown.    

In his presentation, Christoph Kreutzmüller used different historical sources to determine both the perpetrators’ intent and the specific violence experienced by Jews. With the help of press photographs taken by UFA photographer Hans Schaller, which are on display in the permanent exhibition of the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site, Kreutzmüller illustrated the complex nature of the violence: one photograph shows a visibly cheerful crowd gathered outside the draper’s store “Kayserstrümpfe,” which was owned by the Jewish couple, Anna and Fritz Degginger. The entrance is blocked by an SA man with an amused expression, who is turning away a laughing customer. Besides the anti-Jewish warning sign in the shop window, little suggests the violence occurring “behind the scenes.” Years later, when Fritz Degginger was living in exile in Chicago, he described how three “Hitler people” descended on his store and threatened to “beat me over the head with a club and make my brains splatter on the ceiling” if he didn’t close his business. (URL: https://dbjb.hypotheses.org/#_ftn3, 30.5.2023)   

Other photographs, some of which were taken the night before for press purposes, portray the state violence as measures conducted with discipline and order. Few photographs present the events from a Jewish perspective, since taking photographs would have had severe consequences for Jews. Jews responded in different ways to the state violence. Many chose to leave the country and live in exile, while others – especially small-town business owners – moved their activities to Berlin. As a result, there was an increase in Jewish tradespeople in the capital. In 1938, 50,000 Jewish-owned businesses were still registered in Berlin. Anna and Fritz Degginger also tried to withstand the state terror. They moved their business from Kurfürstendamm to the neighboring Meineckestrasse. Their store remained open against all odds until the November pogrom of 1938, which aimed to definitively exclude Jews from economic life. 

Christoph Kreutzmüller argued for recognizing the economic blockade as a critical moment in which the non-Jewish majority population still had a chance to decide how it wanted to respond to the antisemitic policies. There are, in fact, documented cases of non-Jewish customers resisting the call for a boycott. This behavior, however, was not without risk, especially in small towns, where social control and conformity played a stronger role. Individuals who defied the boycott were sometimes intimidated and harassed. The majority of the population remained passive or indifferent, however, which served to legitimize the National Socialists’ anti-Jewish policies overall. The economic blockade in April 1933 thus represents a historical crossroads and, in Christoph Kreutzmüller’s view, also encourages reflection on contemporary forms of responsibility. In conclusion, the historian threw out the question of how we, as individuals and as part of a group, stand up today for those whose well-being and dignity are under attack. 

Contemporary situations also play a role in the educational work of the Memorial and Educational Site. Our colleague Dr. Jakob Müller spoke about these methods in the second part of the webinar. According to Müller, one way to introduce young visitors to the economic blockade is to ask them whether they have ever engaged in a boycott. Their answers can be used to demonstrate that the anti-Jewish measures taken in April 1933 were not a “boycott,” but rather state-organized terror that was approved by a broad swath of the population.   

The story of Richard Stern plays an important role in our educational work. The Jewish entrepreneur and former World War I frontline soldier protested against the anti-Jewish action on 1 April 1933. He appeared with the Iron Cross pinned on his lapel and distributed a leaflet. For Jakob Müller, the protest leaflet and the photograph of Stern standing in front of his store are among the most important exhibits in our permanent exhibition, as they represent evidence contradicting the widespread bias of Jews engaging in passive acquiescence. Richard Stern was arrested after his protest action, but was released the same day thanks to a contact at the police station. He later managed to flee to the United States. The example of Richard Stern clearly illustrates that the Nazi policy of exclusion and persecution occurred gradually and that, in the beginning, there was still the opportunity to protest – albeit not without risk. His story offers numerous opportunities for questions and dialogue on themes of identity, values and the different interpretations of citizenship throughout history. Jakob Müller describes the surprise many visitors express upon learning about this case study of Jewish self-assertion. The reaction illustrates once again how important it is that the perspectives of the people who experienced the history personally be addressed in the educational work of the House of the Wannsee Conference Memorial and Educational Site.