Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany

Resistance of the Heart : Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany by Nathan Stoltzfus is a well written book about the unsuccessful attempt by the Nazi's to exterminate Jews who married Germans of the Christian faith. The fact that the attempt was unsuccessful and that the overwhelming majority of the intermarried Jews were never sent to the death camps and survived the war leaves one with a withering feeling of "what if." The central thesis of the book is that Hitler and Goebbels worry about the reaction of the Christian spouses led them to refuse to forcibly remove the Jewish spouse. They instead resorted to social pressure to force a divorce, so that the Jewish spouse could then easily be sent to the death camps. The social pressure was unsuccessful not because it was not intense, but because the Nazi's failed to give sufficient consideration to the bond between the spouses and the German antipathy toward divorce. A central part of the story focuses on the attempt to round up the intermarried Jews in Berlin for transport to the camps. After the round up, but before their transport, they were housed in a building on Rosenstrasse. When word of this got back to the Christian spouses they surrounded the building and refused to leave until their husband or wife was freed. Amazingly, the Nazi's who murdered millions of Jews, Poles, Gypsies and others let thier prisoners go free. Goebbels reasoned that it was better to not force a confrontation with Christian Germans.What is clear is that the Nazis were extremely concerned about German public opinion and were willing even to ignore their plans for the final solution where it ran counter to the public opinion of even a small part of Germany's populace. The "what if" relates to what would have happened if the greater part of Germany populace had taken the lessons of the Rosenstrasse Protest and attempted to stop the final solution. Certainly the conventional wisdom that they would have been ignored, or worse, must be rethought. In fact, the Rosenstrasse Protest was not an isolated incident, and numerous successful protests altered Nazi behavior. If more Germans, or the Vatican, had learned this simple lesson maybe millions of person would not have perished in the gas chambers of the death camps. It certainly puts to rest the excuse that there was nothing that cold have been done.The book is very well researched and written. It is well worth reading.

An account of the protest wages by the Protestant spouses of German Jews. Because of the tumultuous emotions of my surviving relatives, so much of this history was never discussed in my home. Now I know that the reason for my grandfather's survival was the protest in which my grandmother participated. This book created a starting point to open discussion with my mother on this part of her life. I found the book so powerful that I am purchasing another as a gift.

A fascinating account of one of the most successful protests during the Nazi regime,spurred by the many couples who were intermarried Germans (one spouse Jewish, one not). When the Jewish partners in the marriage were taken away by the Germans, the remaining spouses reacted angrily, culminating in the Rosenstrasse protest of February 1943. This book is a very detailed and powerful look at the heart of a nation - and its peoples. The author interviewed survivors and looked at literally thousands of Nazi records that had never before been examined. I found this book to be very inspiring and couldn't help wondering: what if more people had protested the injustices of Hitler's regime even earlier- could the Holocaust actually have been prevented?

I was very impressed by this book. The author has done much needed work on a little known subject. I was moved by the interviews with survivors.It was inspiring to hear of the faithfullness of these intermaried couples and their devotion to each other. The Rosenstrasse Protest made me realize that even evil people, such as the Nazi authorities, can be forced to listen to protesters. I was able to picture what the hardships of life for these families in Berlin. It's a wonderful book and should be read by anyone interested in Holocaust Studies.

This is an excellent explanation of how mixed marriages between Aryans and non-Aryans (Jews as well as Christians with "Jewish blood") were affected by the Nazi laws. The offspring of these marriages were half-Aryans, half-Jews or Mischlinge. My father, a pure Aryan lost his job as a high school teacher in 1937, my brother was killed in Auschwitz.