Block der Frauen

The Block der Frauen stands in a small public garden on Rosenstraße in Berlin-Mitte. It marks the spot where, in late February 1943, the Gestapo held Jewish men seized in the Factory Action. For several days their non-Jewish wives and relatives gathered outside, demanding their release. On 6 March 1943 the men walked free. The sculptor Ingeborg Hunzinger began work in 1989 and completed the piece in 1994. A second cast of the embracing figures was placed in Berlin-Köpenick’s former prison courtyard. In 2021–22 the sculpture was cleaned and restored by Maria Eichhorn as part of an artistic project that also examined its history. The work consists of six red Rochlitzer Porphyr blocks, each about two and a half metres tall. Four bear high and low reliefs of protesting and grieving women, children and men, interwoven with Jewish symbols and Hebrew letters. On the back of two blocks Hunzinger inscribed lines that read: “Give us back our husbands! Women here conquered death. Jewish men were freed. The power of civil disobedience, the power of love overcame the violence of dictatorship.” The reliefs show crowded women with children, an elderly couple facing death, a man holding a shattered violin, and the moment of reunion between released prisoners and their families. At the heart of the group three blocks form a half-circle around two embracing women who support each other. Beside them stands a stone bench with a seated man, recalling the Nazi ban on Jews using public benches. The sculpture captures both collective fury and personal sorrow, its carved faces and gestures conveying fear and resolve in equal measure. The garden itself remains a quiet place for reflection on civil courage and the cost of resistance.