UROP Project

Building an Association to Honor Civil Defiance in Nazi Germany and Empower Voices of Courage

History, Holocaust, Women, Jewish, Intermarriage

Research Mentor: Mr. Liam Wirsansky, He/Him/His
Department, College, Affiliation: Rosenstrasse Civil Courage Foundation, N/A
Contact Email: lwirsansky@fsu.edu
Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from mentor): Dr. Nathan Stoltzfus He/Him/His
Research Assistant Supervisor Email: nstoltzfus@fsu.edu
Faculty Collaborators:
Faculty Collaborators Email:

Looking for Research Assistants: Yes
Number of Research Assistants: 2
Relevant Majors: Open to all majors
Project Location: Virtual and in person meetings on campus on occasion
Research Assistant Transportation Required: No, the project is remote
Remote or In-person: Fully Remote
Approximate Weekly Hours: 7, Flexible schedule (Combination of business and outside of business. TBD between student and research mentor.)
Roundtable Times and Zoom Link:

• Day: Wednesday, September 2
  Start Time: 7:00
  End Time: 8:00
  Zoom Link: https://us05web.zoom.us/j/9089375618?pwd=S0IxYWQ4MkFIalhaSWcvT3lXcUlydz09

Project Description

Empowering Actions of Courage: Honoring Civil Defiance in Nazi Germany, Encouraging Civil Courage Here and Now
The Rosenstrasse Civil Courage Foundation commemorates and encourages acts of civil courage, concrete actions by persons alone or collectively to illustrate and defend the values of democratic governance of, by, and for the people, in defense of pluralism. We seek to inspire civil courage today through education, emphasizing under-reported acts of women’s defiance in the face of fear. This civil courage is identified with what the Czech dissident Václav Havel called “the attempt to live in the truth,” a form of defiance rooted in everyday life of civilians who defy mass conformity, when necessary, to openly live in the light of their own consciences.

We take our name from the thousands of German Jews rescued from the Holocaust through the refusal of their non-Jewish partners to divorce, in the face of continuous, enormous pressures from Nazi propaganda and Gestapo terror. They did this openly every day in the face of scorn and taunts from neighbors, colleagues and their own families of birth, who sided with Hitler and his promises of a great new world for ‘racially pure’ Germans. Their civil courage is distinguished from traditionally recognized and clandestine acts of resistance such as the military conspiracy to kill Hitler, through its public expression carried on by actions of civilians in everyday life, personally or collectively.

The Rosenstrasse Protest serves as a model and an inspiration about the capacity and responsibility of individuals to make a difference. The Rosenstrasse Civil Courage Foundation was created to preserve and amplify their stories of resistance, to inspire others today. So often in the memory of Hitler and the Holocaust, voices of perpetrators are broadcast by our fascination with evil. How do ordinary people come to commit horrendous, genocidal acts? A mission of the Rosenstrasse Civil Courage Foundation, in light of inspiring civil courage today, is to give resistors and rescuers the last word, rather than the Nazi perpetrators they defied. Our focuses include:

1) Education about the history of the rescue of approximately 2,000 Jews through an open demand by their non-Jewish wives, who asked only for their return, in Nazi Berlin in late winter 1943. This makes sense considering the context of several conditions, prominently the decade-long defiance of these non-Jewish women to bend their knee to Hitler by abandoning their Jewish partners (during the Holocaust Gestapo practice was to deport Jews whose Gentile partners had divorced). Just as important was the public willingness of these wives to put their lives on the line; their day-to-day stance of civil courage since the day Hitler took power communicated their willingness to die for their families, which was underlined during their protest by threats by armed guards that they would be shot if they did not clear the streets. Also prominent was the sensitivity of Hitler and propagandist Joseph Goebbels to popular morale, increased following Germany’s recent military debacle at Stalingrad and the greatly increasing damage caused by Allied bombing raids. The release of Jewish people was of course for tactical rather than moral reasons. The regime thought of it as merely temporary; neither Nazi ideology nor Hitler’s goal to destroy all Jews budged, but time ran out as the Allies pushed Hitler’s Reich back to defeat.

2) Honoring the memory of this rescue together with the women who displayed this important civil courage form of resistance. These protesters and other German non-Jews rescued their Jewish partners beginning with noncompliance with the regime and German society. They thwarted the Nazi dictatorship's intentions to fully carry out its fundamental objective of "racial purification" long enough for more than 10,000 German Jews to survive—nearly all of Germany’s “full” Jews (in Nazi vocabulary) who survived outside of Nazi camps, without going into hiding. They were not in hiding because the regime knew exactly where they lived and continued to supply these “mixed” families with ration cards.

3) Establishing a network and an association of descendants and relatives of those who experienced the Rosenstrasse protest, together with other descendants from German intermarried couples who survived due to the civil courage of the non-Jewish partners. We seek to accumulate an archive of personal narratives, documents, and texts, to allow these persons to get to know one another.

4) Documenting and educating about actions of civil courage around the globe today, with the goal that actions to defend democracy and civil courage can become normative behavior here and now.

Project Title: Building an Association to Honor Civil Defiance in Nazi Germany and Empower Voices of Courage:
Project Description: Join a meaningful research and public history project that honors unsung heroes of the Holocaust—ordinary people who did the extraordinary by defying the Nazi regime through an open, day-to-day stance that followed their conscience rather than Nazi terror and mass conformity. Through this project, student researchers will help build an association of descendants and relatives of those involved in the protest and related intermarriage rescues, contributing to an online archive that preserves these

Research Tasks: As a research assistant, you'll help us bring these stories to life by:
Conducting genealogical and historical research to locate descendants and engage new participants.
Documenting personal histories from descendants of Rosenstrasse protesters and German-Jewish intermarriages.
Creating and curating family webpages with photos, stories, and documents.
Supporting website development and content updates for the Foundation.
Students may tailor their involvement based on their interests and skills, whether in history, writing, research, genealogy, language translation (German/French), or digital media. Exemplary student research will be published through the foundation and additional support will be provided for other publishing opportunities.
This is more than a research project; it's a chance to shape how resistance and courage are remembered, to inspire more of it. By participating, you’ll help ensure these legacies are preserved, shared, and honored for generations to come.
Skills that research assistant(s) may need: Some knowledge of web design and/or German is welcomed but not required.

Skills that research assistant(s) may need: Some knowledge of web design and/or German is welcomed but not required.