Author: USC Shoah Foundation via YouTube
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The Rosenstraße protests began on February 27, 1943. In his testimony, Gad Beck recalls how the Gentile (non-Jewish) women in Berlin, including his aunts, came en masse to Rosenstraße ("Rose Street") in order to protest for the release of the Jewish men detained by the Nazis for deportation to the concentration camps. Gad and his father were among the detainees arrested during the "Fabrikaktion" (the Nazis’ name for the round-up).

Eventually, Gad and his father would be arrested, too. In 1943, Joseph Goebbels, (the chief propagandist of the Nazi party") as a birthday present to Hitler, decreed to make Berlin "Judenrein" (free of all Jews). Jews and Mischlinge ("part-Jews") were still working and living in Berlin even during this time partly because the war required so many German Gentiles (non-Jews) to serve in the military. Goebbel’s plan involved a surprise round up of all the Jews and Mischlinge working in the factories and transport them to pre-determined detention centers around Berlin where they would remain while awaiting deportation to Auschwitz, what was later called the "Fabrikaktion." Gad and his father were arrested and transferred to the Jewish Community Center located on Rosenstraße. This is where the famous Rosenstraße protest occurred. Several civilians descended on the detention center en masse, the majority of them Gentile women, and demanded that the Nazis release their husbands and sons.

The protest lasted several days, despite threats from the soldiers that they would shoot into the crowd if they didn’t disperse. The protesters were resolute and, eventually, the men were freed. Gad recalls seeing his own aunts locked arm-in-arm, protesting in front of the gate. As he notes in his testimony, no one was shot, and no water cannons were used. This was a peaceful protest that succeeded in freeing a few of the remaining Jews still living in Berlin.

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