access to ration cards unless evacuees stayed in their evacuation area. Events In a November 1943 report on current events and their effect on women's mood, the Nazi secret police (security service, SD) made a detailed report to the Third Reich's highest authorities, stating that on 11 October 1943 about 300 women had demonstrated in front of city hall in Witten in order to take a public position against official measures. According to the SS, the women gathered on Adolf Hitler Square in the Ruhr-area city of Witten to protest against an official decision by the regional party leader (Gauleiter) to withhold their food ration cards until they moved from their homes in the city to evacuation sites in the Baden countryside. The women became more outraged when they discovered that not every area had adopted this policy, and that their neighbors moving back home from their evacuation area were able to receive their rations stamps. The Security Service, Nazi Police, or SD, reported: The women in question had indeed tried to force the delivery of food ration cards, in order to take a public stand against the measures that led to this prohibition of the delivery of food ration cards. Shameful scenes developed so that the city administration of Witten found itself forced to call on the police so as to restore order. They refused to get involved however since the demands of the women were fair and there was no legal basis for not handing out food ration cards to German people who had returned [home]. Also in Hamm, Lünen, and Bochum wild scenes reportedly played out in front of the food offices. Agitated crowds of people waited in line for the distribution [of rations]. Because some of the women brought with them small children and nursing infants and the miners in some cases showed up in the place of their wives, those waiting began to exchange accounts of their experiences in the places they had been evacuated to, and the craziest (tollste) statements were made. Miners declared that they would not return to the mines before they had received the necessary food ration cards for their families. Women announced that they would rather suffer bombs here than to once again return to the quarters assigned to them. The publication in the newspaper as well as at the distribution center on October 12, 1943 that food ration cards