Most of the critics raved about this film from a cinematographic point of view, but missed its major message.
The viewing public thought the story line thin and contrived, the characters shallow and undeveloped, but they also missed the major message. The film is a first time public presentation of how a handful of unorganised Aryan women in 1943 held a spontaneous week long vigil outside the Jewish Community Center in Rosenstrasse, in the heart of Berlin, where their Jewish husbands were detained by the Nazis pending transportation to the extermination camps. Their demonstration eventually forced the Nazis to release the men.
The film's major message was that the Nazi regime was conscious of public opinion and backed down when resisted on the extermination issue. Whilst the women of Rosenstrasse were the only public demonstration of such resistance inside Nazi Germany, there were 2 notable acts of resistance to the Nazi's "final solution". One was the refusal of Boris, King of Nazi occupied Bulgaria to hand over Bulgaria's 50,000 Jews to the Nazi Murder Machine, claiming that they were too important to the wellbeing of the country, and the other was by King Mohamed V of Morocco who answered the Vichy French demand to deport the 265,000 strong ancient Jewish community by saying "There are no Jews in my country, only Moroccans!"
The ladies of Rosenstrasse also showed that the Nazis when challenged backed off - it is said that Goebbels himself ordered the rapid release because he feared that if the story be publicised it would encourage further demonstrations against the extermination program.
The film left me with the feeling that if the German people and the leaders of the states of occupied Europe had also protested many of the 6 million Jews and many millions of other minority groups could have been saved from the death camps. It reveals as a lie, the claim that ordinary people could do nothing against the Nazi regime - this for me is the film's most important message.
The viewing public thought the story line thin and contrived, the characters shallow and undeveloped, but they also missed the major message. The film is a first time public presentation of how a handful of unorganised Aryan women in 1943 held a spontaneous week long vigil outside the Jewish Community Center in Rosenstrasse, in the heart of Berlin, where their Jewish husbands were detained by the Nazis pending transportation to the extermination camps. Their demonstration eventually forced the Nazis to release the men.
The film's major message was that the Nazi regime was conscious of public opinion and backed down when resisted on the extermination issue. Whilst the women of Rosenstrasse were the only public demonstration of such resistance inside Nazi Germany, there were 2 notable acts of resistance to the Nazi's "final solution". One was the refusal of Boris, King of Nazi occupied Bulgaria to hand over Bulgaria's 50,000 Jews to the Nazi Murder Machine, claiming that they were too important to the wellbeing of the country, and the other was by King Mohamed V of Morocco who answered the Vichy French demand to deport the 265,000 strong ancient Jewish community by saying "There are no Jews in my country, only Moroccans!"
The ladies of Rosenstrasse also showed that the Nazis when challenged backed off - it is said that Goebbels himself ordered the rapid release because he feared that if the story be publicised it would encourage further demonstrations against the extermination program.
The film left me with the feeling that if the German people and the leaders of the states of occupied Europe had also protested many of the 6 million Jews and many millions of other minority groups could have been saved from the death camps. It reveals as a lie, the claim that ordinary people could do nothing against the Nazi regime - this for me is the film's most important message.