The Wannsee Conference and Rosenstrasse

Dear Grandkids,

In this excerpt, my father describes events that occurred and decisions that were made by Nazis in 1942 and 1943 that tightened the noose of war and significantly impacted his home and family.

My father tried to impress upon his children the absolute hell of war but, try as I might from the vantage point of my own happy, secure, privileged American upbringing, I couldn’t fathom the reality that Dad experienced. I still can’t – and I’ve been reading and studying his materials for years now.

Unless things go very horribly from here forward in America (Trump has two more days in office and then things should vastly improve with President Biden!), you won’t be able to fathom the hell my father describes, either.

I hope, for your sake, dear grandchildren, that this is the case.

Here are your great grandfather’s words:

Two events took place in Germany 1942 and 1943 that helped define the fate of Jews during WWII, but neither of these events were officially known until many, many decades later.

The first of these events was the secret “Wannsee Conference,” which took place on January 20, 1942 at an estate outside Berlin that had been seized from a Jewish family. The goal of the Wannsee Conference was to “settle the Jewish question once and for all.” Most of my information about that diabolical meeting comes from the excellent movie Conspiracy, starring Kenneth Branagh as Reinhard Heydrich and Stanley Tucci and Adolf Eichmann. The movie lasts 96 minutes, the exact length of time it took that Nazi gathering to decide on the fate of millions of Jews.

By strict orders, all evidence of the meeting was to be destroyed, but a single transcript of meeting minutes was found in 1947 among seized documents from the German Foreign Office.

The “final solution” was decided, or rather, approved, by vote -- by a convivial, evil, polite gathering of high officials, presided over by a most suave and cold-blooded Heydrich. The purpose of the meeting was to demand -- without written record -- the cooperation of all government branches to the order that millions of Jews would be “deported” to the East -- meaning places like Auschwitz. There was some mostly subdued discussion, but the purpose was clear: the war is not going well. Cooperate, or else. It was all done most gentlemanly, with hors d'oeuvres, fine French wine, and imported cigars.

   

The discussion that took place among these Nazis around a conference table in a mansion as they sipped wine deeply affected me as I watched the movie. The Nazis needed manpower so badly that they could hardly afford to include half Jews (like me) with full Jews (like my father) in their “evacuation” plans. Much better, they decided, to use us Mischlinge for slave labor than to transport us with the others. The Nazis in attendance were -- again, after several tries -- unable to solve that aspect of the “Jewish question,” in the end leaving it to be dealt with “after we win the war.” (They still believed, or pretended to believe, that they would win the war!) Meanwhile, they could use us to do some “productive work.” Whatever they called it, I believe that I am alive today due to decisions made – and not made – at that Wannsee Conference.

I’ve seen this movie a few times and each time it stuns me. How is it that humans can have such hatred, such malice, such callous disregard for fellow humans? Jews were spoken of as product – product that were causing “a storage problem in Germany.” The Nazis at the table discussed what would happen to which Jews. Full Jews (lie Carl), they decided, would be “evacuated to the East,” unless they were married to the “right kind of German” (like Irmgard), in which case they would be spared – but only if the mixed couple lived as cultural Germans (not Jews) and only if their children were being raised as Christians.

‘Okay,’ I’m thinking as I watch this. ‘Carl’s life – and thus my existence - was just barely spared there.’

And what about half-Jews (Mischlinge, like my father)? What, the Nazis asked, should be done with them? Sterilization was one suggestion, but it didn’t solve the “storage problem.” Then someone suggests that they can be sterilized and then used for forced labor. Ultimately, it’s decided that they will be used for labor, but no decision is made about sterilization.

‘Okay,’ I’m thinking as I watch this. ‘Dad’s life – and thus my existence - was just barely spared there.’

Each time I watch this move I experience this little existential crisis all over again.

The Nazi attendees’ main reason for not treating the “Mischling question” more aggressively was their awareness of potential riots against their oppressors. Since many German Jews, especially “privileged” ones, were already fully absorbed into German society, their offspring were even more so, and their friends were almost exclusively fellow “good Germans” who had no ties to “non-Aryans,” racially or culturally. To them, any deportation of their friends, who they regarded as fully German, would almost certainly be most offensive and intolerable, giving them much cause for protest. In all their totalitarian behavior, the Nazis - and Hitler particularly - were deadly afraid of that. But no one knew it.

The second event occurred at the Rosenstrasse Detention Center in Berlin during the winter of 1943. Hundreds of Mischlinge and Jewish spouses from “Privileged Mixed Marriages” had been rounded up from their homes and jobs by the Gestapo and brought to the Rosenstrasse Center for holding before deportation “to the East.”

Non-Jewish wives of Jewish men and Mischlinge who had been arrested and detained for imminent deportation stood outside the deportation center for a full week, First, a few of their “Aryan” wives showed up, peacefully, just trying to find their husbands and, if possible, get a glimpse of them. In the following days, more wives came, eventually joined by friends, protesting the Nazis’ actions and demanding that their loved ones be released. At one point, one of them called out “Wir wollen unsere Männer wieder!” (“We want our husbands back!”). They were desperate and terrified, but they bravely let the Nazis know why they were there. It became a chorus.

They were confronted by the Gestapo who put machine guns were put in place to dissuade the protesters. It didn’t work. A larger protest was building, now including citizens not related to the detained men.

(Photo credit: LaBrujula Verde)

After seven days, buckling to the pressure and protest, the Jewish and Mischling men were released. The Nazis were so afraid of a public protest from the large circle of “German” friends that they freed the prisoners! They even returned dozens who had already been shipped off to Auschwitz! Imagine! A protest took place in the capital city of the Reich, in the middle of the war that, if widely known, would have said to Germans, “Yes! You CAN protest!”

The incident at the Rosenstrasse Detention Center is the only known instance of Germans overtly resisting the deportation of Jews. The entire instance was completely hushed up in the press until Nathan Stoltzfus wrote a book called Resistance of the Heart in 1996. The 2004 movie Rosenstrasse is also based on this event.

 

Had Mutti known about this “Resistance of the Heart,” she surely would have commented with one of her favorite sayings: “Frauen haben mehr Zivilcourage!” Men may be brave as soldiers and brave in war, but women, according to my mother, “have more civil courage!”

“Zivilcourage” means the audacity to do something that we men, with all our “unemotional rationality” would never dare attempt. It was one of her favorite sayings, acquired and enforced by her role in her own family, no doubt. It was Irmgard’s main problem with her husband: Carl was too rational, too accepting, too willing not to protest at the spur of the moment when “they” interfered with his life and his freedom.

In general, 1942 was the first year the shortages of everyday life became really serious. People thought it could not possibly get any worse, yet rumors were constantly flying that the next ration cards would be smaller and that next year’s clothing coupons would be next to nothing. What people didn’t know, and didn’t expect, was that things would get much worse, for years to come. The food situation was probably the worst. Even potatoes and vegetables -- kohlrabi, carrots, and maybe cabbage -- were impossible to find, with or without coupons.

People helped each other as much as they could. As Mother put it, people toss the golden ball back and forth, just as we did when we were kids. Sometimes it’s thrown to you when someone sends you a coupon for 100 grams of butter, and sometimes you could spare a pound of bread. Problem is, there are always those who think the ball should constantly be thrown to them! All of us got skinnier in those years, but Mother had to feed us all the time, even when it was only a cream-of-wheat and potato cake at Christmas time.

Try to imagine clothing three growing kids in the middle of wartime shortages. Every piece of material had to be used and re-used, sewn and re-sewn, sixed and re-sized, dyed and re-dyed. Even a spool of thread or skein of yarn required a clothing coupon. Mother tried to line a pair of wooden shoes for Rainer, but had to stop half-way through because she ran out of scraps. The clothing shortage became even worse in winter because one had to wear a coat, even in the house, which was desperately cold because the grating of the central furnace had rusted through and new grating was impossible to get. Everything was hard to get. For instance, the white doors had to be painted brown because white paint, made with lead oxide, was no longer available. Neither was wallpaper. Nor shoe soles.

In 1943 there were more and more bombing raids on cities in Germany, though we in Chemnitz were mostly spared -- for now. In July, at least as many civilians – 45,000 - were killed in Hamburg alone than had been killed in England during the entire war. The lives of hundreds of thousands of people had been ruined by hunger, homelessness, injury and other impacts of war. The misery was unimaginable.

     

Most of those who survived blamed those who dropped the bombs for their barbaric methods, and of course called for revenge. Certainly, some became more hostile to the Nazi regime that had started this whole war, but would they dare voice their rage? Never -- it would only land them in jail or, as was known at the time, in a KZ (concentration camp). The sacrifices of those who died on the ground and in the air, those who mourned, starved, and lost their homes and their city, as well as the sacrifices of those who paid for the making the hundreds of thousands of bombs -- it was all in vain. Most of it was counterproductive. Yet we do it again and again.

The impact of the air war was felt all over the country. Almost everyone had lost relatives and friends, and everyone knew someone who had become homeless. We all shared what we had, yet no one had enough food to share, and no-one could lift the misery from the shoulders of their friends and neighbors.