Nathan Stoltzfus tells the little-attended-to story of the German women who rescued their husbands from deportation and death in early 1943. Swept up from their forced labor jobs in what was meant to be the Final Roundup in the national capital, 1700-2000 Jews, mostly men married to non-Jewish women, were separated from the 6000 other victims of the Gestapo and SS and herded into Rosenstra§e 2-4, a welfare office for the Jewish community in central Berlin. Because these Jews had German relatives, many of them highly connected, Adolf Eichmann hoped that segregating them from the others would convince family members that their loved ones were being sent to labor camps rather than to more ominous destinations in occupied Poland. Normally, those arrested remained in custody for two days before being loaded onto trains for the East. Before that could happen in this case, however, wives and other relatives got wind of what was happening and appeared at the Rosenstra§e address, first in ones and twos, and then in ever-growing numbers. Perhaps as many as six thousand participated in the protest, although not all at the same time. Women demanded back their husbands, day after day, for a week. Unarmed, unorganized, and leaderless, they faced down the most brutal forces at the disposal of the Third Reich. Goebbels, Gauleiter of Berlin and anxious to have it racially cleansed, was also in charge of the nation's public morale. On both counts he was worried about the possible repercussions of the women's actions. Rather than inviting more open dissent by shooting the women down in the streets and fearful of jeopardizing the secrecy of the Final Solution, Goebbels with Hitler's concurrence released the Rosenstra§e prisoners and also ordered the return of twenty-five of them already sent to Auschwitz. To both men, the decision was a mere postponement of the inevitable. But they were mistaken. Almost all of those released survived the war. The women won an astonishing victory over the forces of destruction.

Hitler placed great emphasis on winning the support of Germans. Terror was never conceived of as the best means of achieving the perfectly united Volk or even the lesser goal of extorting its compliance...

I just wonder what would happen if a similar situation would occur--not under the unspeakably cruel and horrific Nazi Regime--but under the PA and Abbas.

o How would the PA and Palestinian Arabs in general react to the marriage of Arabs to Jews within their midst--what would they do?

o Whereas the morale of Nazi Germany--when mobilized--could be brought to oppose the murder of Jews, where does the morale of Palestinian Arabs lie?

o While the likes of Goebbels was worried about public reaction to the shooting of Germans, how would Palestinians--and Abbas--react to the shooting of their fellow Palestinians?

o While Nazi Germany eschewed the use of terror as a tool, how does Abbas--who chairs Fateh's main governing body--feel about using terror?

Just asking.

Mark Krikorian at The Corner has a post entitled Nation of Jihad

MEMRI sent out a report the other day that got my attention. It translated the ravings of a sheikh saying that the Palestinians "are a Nation of Jihad and Martyrdom." This is more telling than he probably realizes. Many observers dismiss Palestinian nationalism as fictitious, promoting a non-existent people invented only after 1967. As true as that was, the Palestinians are now a real nation in the hearts and minds of its people, the only way that counts -- but a nation which exists solely to extirpate the Jews. In other words, the Palestinians really are a "nation of jihad" because, unlike the Chinese nation or American or Persian or Mexican or Russian, Palestine has no past, no distinctiveness, no commonality other than being the negation of Israel, the anti-Israel -- anti-matter, if you will, on the periodic table of nations. (I'll accept nominations for which nation is which element -- I vote for France as helium, an inert gas.) I don't mean that every Arabic-speaking person from the old British mandate of Palestine is a killer, but that Palestinian nationhood as an idea is inextricably tied to the liquidation of Israel. And this is why they need to be walled off.

Nazi Germany, with all of its atrocities, at some level had roots to civilization--or there could be no united democratic Germany today.

Where are the roots of Palestinian Arabs?

Like I said, just asking.

Crossposted at Daled Amos

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