Block of Women

Between the Hackescher Markt and Alexanderplatz runs Rosenstraße, which together with the Heidereutergasse provides the boundary of a small park in the Marienviertel of old Berlin. There, on the former site of the Old Synagogue destroyed in World War II, stands the "Block of Women" memorial to the women's uprising of 1943. Some 8,000 Jewish citizens of Berlin were detained at the end of February 1943 as part of a renewed wave of deportations by the SS and the Gestapo. This included some 2,000 Jews, mostly men, who were partners in mixed marriages which had until then been tolerated and spared from persecution. Separated from the rest of the prisoners, they were taken to the building which had formerly housed the Jewish Welfare Administration in Rosenstraße 2-4. Out of desperation and dismay about the uncertain fate of their husbands and fathers, the women gathered in front of the building with their children on the evening of 27 February 1943 and demanded to speak with their loved ones. There followed a later call for the release of their family members from the so-called "Factory Action", the euphemism used to denote the final round-up of Berlin's Jews in 1943. For a week, some 600 women engaged in daily protests.