Hail the Rosenstrasse women!

A young princess is asked to choose the man she would like to marry. She chooses one only to be told on her return from forest that the man she has chosen to marry is destined to die in a year. But she marries him anyway. A year later, 'the day' arrives, and her husband is taken away by the just lord of death. But the young wife decides to take him on to save her husband. And she does so, using peaceful means. She confronts him with her knowledge, her logical reasoning and her dedication to her cause. And she wins her husband back.

Did it really happen? Very unlikely. But we do remember, read and tell this story countless times -- we have been doing so as long as we can remember. A story written thousands of years ago lives on. Savitri is our hero.

Take a Savitri and multiply her 6000 times. Put them all together in one city. Have the lord of death take away their men (1800 of them -- because not all these Savitris are married to those men; Some of them are just women relatives of the men) -- the men who are destined to die not because of what they did but because who they are. As the most unjust and cruel lord of death prepares to grant those men their death, the women folk take him on, using peaceful means. No arms. No violence. Not all 6000 at once. In ones and twos initially and numbers picking up slowly. By the end of the week, the lord of death relents. All 1800 men released.

Unbelievable? Most certainly. Unlikely? Very much so. Did it really happen? Yes, it did. In1943. In Berlin. Do we know or remember it? Obviously not.

As the Nazis prepared to round up the last of the Jews in Berlin (the Final Round up, during Fabrikaktion), they picked up 1800 Jewish men, most of them married to non-Jewish women, and prepared to transport them to concentration camps while telling the women that they were being taken to labor camps. As they were held temporarily in a building on Rosenstrasse, Berlin, prior to transportation, some women got wind of it. One by one, they showed up on Rosenstrasse. And a peaceful protest, to save their men, began. Women started streaming in everyday. By the end of the week, 6000 women had taken part in the protest. A totally unorganized, totally unarmed, totally peaceful protest. They took on the very brutal SS, no less! And they won their men back. No shoot-outs, no killing. All the 1800 men were released. 25 men who had already been sent to Auschwitz were also recalled and released. And most of them even survived the war.

This was one of the very few open and successful attempts at protesting the actions of the Third Reich.

Why am I writing this today? Because it was today, February 27th, back in 1943, that the Rosenstrasse protest began.

Not sure if Gandhiji ever heard of this incident, but he definitely would have smiled had he heard it.