As soon the word of what happened during the early morning hours started to spread around the city, the German wives of these Jewish men began going to Rosentrasse with the intention of finding their husbands. The first day stretched into the second one and more people started to gather around. The desperation grew together with the numbers and some women started shouting in unison: Give us our husbands back! This act became the Rosenstrasse Protest.

Gestapo agents and the SS tried to intimidate these women with machine guns and threats of arrest but they didn’t leave. Charlotte Israel, one of the women that was there during the protest, was interviewed in 1990 about what happened during those days and said that as soon as the machine guns were setup, the women backed but they knew that they would be shot in any case.

If they stayed there protesting and trying to find their husband, they could be shot. If they left, they knew their husband would die. So, instead of backing down, they started yelling Murderer, murderer, murderer, murderer in unison.

The Nazi officials were not happy with what was happening at Rosenstrasse and Goebbels was particularly exasperated. He couldn’t believe that Germans were siding with Jews. On March 6, 1943, after more than a week of protest, Goebbels ordered the release of intermarried Jews.

As those intermarried Jews were returning home, the other Berlin Jews were traveling to see their fate in death camps. Goebbels only released the intermarried Jews because he knew he would finish the job in a few weeks, something that never happened.

The cover-up operation to the Rosenstrasse Protest started as soon as the Jews were released. The Nazi lies insisted that the protest was against the British bombing of Berlin and those people were some the homeless looking for better conditions.

Goebbels blamed the arrest of the intermarried Jews on overzealous Gestapo officers who took their authority to a next level. And, of course, downplayed the influence of the protesters in the decision to free the Jews.

Goebbels knew that if the Rosentrasse protest spread beyond Berlin, the program of genocide would be in trouble. So, if the Rosentrasse protest was over, Nazi Germany could continue the murder of Jews elsewhere without any protests and this is what happened.