This year marks the seventieth anniversary of a remarkable public protest by ordinary German women against the Nazi regime.

From February 27 to March 6, 1943, a group of unorganized German women went into the streets of downtown Berlin, within a few city blocks of the most feared centers of Nazi power, to protest for the release of their Jewish husbands, who had just been arrested by the Gestapo. Daily giving voice to their collective demand – “give us our husbands back” – first softly, then with increasing urgency, they succeeded in achieving their goal.

For these German women, the brutal Nazi state had lost all legitimacy. Like very few others, they were willing to express this publicly, on the streets, for all to see. For decades, their story was largely absent from histories of Nazi Germany. Their story challenges the comforting, generally accepted narrative that opposition was honorable but always futile. This year’s anniversary is an opportunity to focus deserved attention on these women’s brave action – and its implications for resistance more broadly.

On February 27, 1943, as part of the Nazi plan to remove the last remaining Jews from German soil, the Gestapo arrested some 2,000 Berlin Jews who had not yet been deported because they were married to non-Jews. In response, hundreds of women – wives of those arrested – pushed their way onto the street in front of Rosenstrasse 2-4, an office of the Jewish community where these arrested Jews were being held, and began to protest.

SS men as well as policemen guarded the single entrance. Over the course of the following week the Gestapo repeatedly threatened to shoot the protesters in the street, causing them to scatter briefly before resuming their collective cry of “give us our husbands back.”

Decades later, I interviewed one of these women, Elsa Holzer, who remembered arriving on the street in search of her husband. “I thought,” she said, “I would be alone there the first time I went to the Rosenstrasse…. I didn’t necessarily think it would do any good, but I had to go see what was going on…. If you had to calculate whether you would do any good by protesting, you wouldn’t have gone. But we wanted to show that we weren’t willing to let them [our husbands] go. I went to Rosenstrasse every day, before work. And there was always a flood of people there. It wasn’t organized, or instigated. Everyone was simply there. Exactly like me. That’s what is so wonderful about it.”

During the same week of this protest, some 7,000 of the last Jews in Berlin were sent to Auschwitz. On Rosenstrasse, however, the regime hesitated; almost all of those held there were released on March 6. Even intermarried Jews who had also been sent to Auschwitz and put in work camps were returned to Germany.

Surprising as it might seem, these events on closer examination fit with the treacherous strategies of the Nazi regime for domestic control. The Rosenstrasse protest occurred as many Germans were tempted to doubt Hitler’s leadership following Germany’s debacle in the Battle of Stalingrad. As he elaborated in Mein Kampf, Hitler believed that popular support comprised the primary pillar of his authority among the German “racial” people, and his dictatorship throughout strove to maintain this basis of his power. To end this protest, the regime released the intermarried Jews, furthering, for that moment, Hitler’s goal of quelling any appearance of dissention.

The murderous Nazi regime also appeased other public protests. On October 11, 1943, on Adolf Hitler Square in the city of Witten, some three hundred women protested against the official decision to withhold their food ration cards until they evacuated their homes as part of Nazi policy to protect civilians from bombing raids. The following day Germans in Lünen, Hamm and Bochum also protested on the streets for the same reason.

In response, Hitler ordered all regional authorities not to withhold ration cards as a method of forcing civilians to evacuate their homes. This was followed by further orders by Nazi officials to refrain from “coercive measures” against evacuees who had returned. In his cold calculations, Hitler chose not to draw further attention to public protest, judging it the best way to protect his authority – and the appearance, promoted by his propaganda machine, that all Germans stood united behind him.

On Friday afternoon, Arabs blocked the entrance to the town of Elazar in Gush Etzion.

On Friday evening, a terrorist was caught infiltrating into the nearby town of Efrat.

H/T Natan Epstein

Police are preparing for Arab riots, as Otzma L’Yisrael political leader Michael Ben-Ari and his party’s supporters are planning a march inside the Arab town of Musmus in the Wadi Ara region on Tuesday.

They will be marching under the slogan of, “Without duties, there are no rights.”

Ben-Ari claims that many Israeli Arabs, and even entire villages are not not paying taxes, building illegally, and generally ignoring the laws of the state.

Police are expecting a large, and potentially violent counter-protest in the village. Residents of the village have called for a general strike today, and hundreds have been reported as protesting at the junction at the entrance to the village.

Musmus is located just north of Um El Fahm, and 13 miles east of Zichron Yaacov.

MK Michael Ben-Ari of the Otzma l’Yisrael party led a protest on Monday against the illegal Sudanese and Eritrean aliens living in southern Tel Aviv. Hundred of people participated in the rally.

Ben-Ari and Aryeh Eldad have made the expulsion of the illegal aliens a centerpiece of their political campaign.

The protest called, “Blowing up the Silence” was initiated after an Eritrean alien was caught brutally raping an 83 year old woman. The suspect, who was tied to the assault by his DNA, has reportedly has been arrested a number of time for other sexual assaults.

After a night of protests threatening the presidential palace, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has returned home, despite national outrage over his attempts at constitutional reform.

Police held back tens of thousands of protests around the perimeter of the residence, citizens who came out to protest reforms which will strongly increase the powers of the president and severely restrict any judicial oversight.

A referendum on the new measures is expected to be supported by the MuslimBrotherhood in the parliament.

A call by a far-right Hungarian parliamentarian to register Jews on lists as national security threats met international condemnation on Tuesday, as well as a protest outside the legislature, calling for his resignation.

Marton Gyongyosi of the Jobbik party said he would not resign, and said he had meant Hungarians with Israeli passports should be listed, not all Hungarian Jews.  He issued an apology to “my Jewish compatriots” for any misunderstanding.

The recommendation came following a parliamentary discussion of Hungary’s position on the recent war in Gaza, during which several legislators stated their interest in a halt to Israel’s attacks on terror targets.

Reuters quoted Gyongyosi as saying “”I think such a conflict makes it timely to tally up people of Jewish ancestry who live here, especially in the Hungarian parliament and the Hungarian government, who, indeed, pose a national security risk to Hungary.”

Protests outside the parliament featured Hungarians wearing yellow stars and chanting “Nazis go home!”

Almost a full day after Gyongyosi’s statement, the government issued its own statement condemning the idea.

Between 500,000 to 600,000 Hungarian Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Approximately 100,000 Jews now live in Hungary.

Over the past few days, Haredi residents of the Shmuel Hanavi neighborhood in Jerusalem have been running an intense campaign against one of their neighbors, reportedly a mother of 11, who is living alone, and conducting a life style which the residents find objectionable.

Pashkvils (warning posters) were spread around the neighborhood, criticizing women wearing tight clothes, calling them “animals.” According to the website Hadrei Haredim, the woman in question is being accused of luring young Haredi women to her path.

A source inside the Haredi community in Jerusalem told the Jewish Press that the woman in question is running a house of ill repute.

It appears that because of their reluctance to “name a spade a spade,” the Haredi community is finding it difficult to raise effective public objection to the shameful enterprise in their midst. Some Chasidic rebbes and Haredi rabbis have issued a strong letter against the woman and her “apartment of abomination,” but stopped short of saying what type of abomination was being practiced there.

On Saturday night, rabbis and several dozen local residents (and curious onlookers) demonstrated outside the apartment. One of the leaders of the campaign, a local rabbi, announced: “We will fight vigorously” against this abomination.

Stones, eggs and bags of water were thrown from adjoining buildings at the protesters. Miraculously, no one was hurt, except for one minor injury sustained by one of the people on the street.

Police force and Riot Police eventually came down and blocked the area outside the building where the targeted woman resides, to prevent violence.

Our source said the Haredi inability to articulate the problem in the neighborhood reminded him of a joke: a man goes to see his rabbi and confesses that he sinned, but he just can’t utter what he had done.. “Was it with that woman from that street?” the rabbi asks. “No,” says the man. “Was it with that other woman from that other street?” the rabbi asks. Again, no. Finally the man comes out and his friend asks him, did the rabbi give you absolution? “No,” says the man, “but I took down plenty of prospects.”

Rami Levy, one of the symbols of peaceful Jewish-Arab coexistence was once again targeted by Palestinians and foreign leftwing activists.

The Tazpit News Agency reports that on Friday afternoon 30 Palestinians and foreign and Israeli anarchists protested and blocked the road in front of the Rami Levy supermarket, this time in Gush Etzion.

Security forces arrived and broke up the protest. One anarchist was arrested.

Rami Levy is a popular supermarket chain that employs both Arab and Jewish workers, and clients from both sectors shop there side by side.