“Christian relatives demonstrated outside for days. … Just total unity,” said Gad Beck, expressing his gratitude for those who participated in the Rosenstrasse protest, which took place #OnThisDay in 1943.

 “Christian relatives demonstrated outside for days. … Just total unity,” said Gad Beck, expressing his gratitude for those who participated in the Rosenstrasse protest, which took place #OnThisDay in 1943.

Gad, pictured above, was born in Vienna in 1923 to a Protestant father and a Jewish mother. Since he fell into the category the Nazis deemed “mixed race,” he was initially exempt from Jewish roundups in Berlin. But this did not last long. 

On February 17, 1943, Gad was ordered to report to the former Jewish community building on a street known as Rosenstrasse. He was held there with 2,000 others—mostly sons with one Jewish parent and the Jewish husbands of non-Jewish German women.

Upon hearing that the men were being held at Rosenstrasse, 200 German women—mostly non-Jewish wives and other female relatives—demonstrated on Rosenstrasse. These family members of those incarcerated believed the Nazis would send their loved ones to German-occupied Poland, based on recent deportations from Berlin.

Historians have shown that the Nazis did not intend to deport these particular victims. However, their family and friends did not know this and took a risk. Until the Rosenstrasse protest, there had never been a demonstration on behalf of Jews in wartime Nazi Germany.

Gad was eventually released from Rosenstrasse on March 6 and survived the Holocaust. He passed away in Berlin in June 2012 at age 88.

Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Gad Beck

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