The "Fabrik-Aktion"...!


At the beginning of 1943, around 15,100 citizens of the Jewish faith still lived in the German capital, Berlin, which the city's Gauleiter, Dr. "Siegesmund" (= "Victory mouth") Goebbels ...


... has been a thorn in the side for a long time!

In mid-February the Nazis decide to finally make the capital of the Reich "free of Jews". Goebbels assigns responsibility for this to Section IV B 4 of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office, RSHA) in Prinz-Albrecht-Straße ...



... the so-called "Judenreferat", which is headed by the notorious SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann ...:



With real German bureaucratic thoroughness, Eichmann also has it determined who "for the time being", as they say, should NOT be arrested:

- Jewish partners from "Mischehen" (= "mixed marriages"), under certain circumstances also after divorce from "mixed marriages",

- married "Geldungsjuden" (= "valid Jews") who lived with "Aryan" relatives,

- Jews over 65 years of age, provided they were not married to a Jew under 65 years of age,

- Holders of certain medals and precisely listed awards (iron cross for example)

- also persons who were postponed by special decrees of the RSHA.

At the end of February the meticulous planning was then put into practice:

On the morning of February 27, 1943, the Gestapo and armed SS members suddenly cordoned off around 100 companies and transported the arrested persons on open trucks to prepared collection points ...:





Since male Jewish Berliners were strictly obliged to work, one only had to go to the factories and attack the victims there. Therefore the mass arrest went down in history as "Factory Action".

Other Jews, such as those who are obliged to work at night or who are too old to work and who are identified by the Jewish star, are arrested by the police on the street ...:



The Gestapo then searches apartments for "forgotten" Jews and takes away all Jewish residents who are found there ...:




In total, around 11,000 Berlin Jews are imprisoned in this "factory action" in Berlin.

Most of them were deported to Auschwitz in five transports between March 1 and March 6, 1943 ...:







Two thirds of the deportees are murdered immediately after their arrival in Auschwitz . She - and many many other Jews murdered by Germans - are remembered today in the "Stolperstein Operation" by the German artist Gunter Demnig...:

Since 1992 the artist has been - financed only through voluntary donations! - laying so-called "stumbling blocks" in front of houses where murdered Jews once lived, reminding of their fate ...:









But back to the "factory action" of the Nazis, which had an aftermath:

Around 4,000 of those scheduled for arrest, deportation and murder - partly with the help of Berliners - were able to evade arrest during the factory operation. "Siegesmund" Gobbels was very angry about this. On March 2, 1943, he noted in his diary:



“Unfortunately, here too it turned out that the better circles, especially the intellectuals, do not understand our Jewish policy and in some cases are on the side of the Jews. As a result, our action has been prematurely betrayed, so that a crowd of Jews have been wiped through our hands. But we will still get hold of them. "
The "Fabrikaktion" became known through something else:

The Nazi hunters also arrest many people whom their boss Eichmann had actually excluded from the "factory action":

About 2,000 people, all Jews living in "mixed marriages" as well as many "valid Jews" and some "Jewish mixed race" were brought to a temporary assembly camp for further inspection in the Jewish community building in Rosenstrasse in the Mitte district ...:



Relatives of the arrested gathered in front of the building for days, protested loudly and publicly against the arrest - and did not allow themselves to be driven away by the police.

This demonstration only ended when the last people imprisoned on Rosenstrasse were released and left the building (on March 12, 1943).

This memorial in Rosenstrasse is a reminder ...:



It was the only time in Germany during the Nazi era that people publicly revolted against the arrest of their relatives - and their success shows that resistance against Nazi barbarism was quite possible ...

In the meantime there is a right-wing extremist party in the German parliament, whose honorary chairman described the Nazi era as a "fly shit in history" ...