Platform 17 Memorial

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  White roses lie on the grounds of the Platform 17 Memorial in Berlin-Grunewald.

• The inscription "Never Again" is written on the floor at the Platform 17 Memorial at Grunewald station.

• A man walks past part of the Platform 17 Memorial in the Grunewald district.

The Platform 17 Memorial at Grunewald Station commemorates the thousands of Jews who were deported from Berlin on Deutsche Reichsbahn trains from this platform.

From the fall of 1941 to the spring of 1942, approximately 10,000 German Jews were deported from here to labor and concentration camps in Riga, Warsaw, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Theresienstadt.

Previous Memorials at Grunewald Station

Even before the inauguration of the Platform 17 Memorial in 1998, there had been commemorative plaques at Grunewald station. However, there was no permanent reminder of the systematic violence againgst Jewish people that took place here. The first permanent memorial was created by the Polish artist Karol Broniatowski. Since 1991, a concrete wall with negative imprints of human bodies has commemorated the long walks and marches to the deportation stations.

Today's Platform 17 Memorial

In the course of coming to terms with its role in the deportation, the Deutsche Bahn held a limited competition for th design of a new memorial. The winning design was submitted by architects Nicolaus Hirsch, Wolfgang Lorch and Andrea Wandel. The memorial consists of 186 cast steel plates embedded in the railroad ballast. On these plates, the dates and destinations of all deportation trains from Berlin are noted in chronological order, as well as the number of Jews deported in each case. A second part of the memorial is the vegetation that has spread between the tracks: it is a symbol that no train will ever leave the station at this track again. The Platform 17 Memorial was inaugurated on January 27, 1998 and is open to the public.

Information

• Address:
  Am Bahnhof Grunewald
  14193 Berlin
  City map
• Admission Fee:
  publicly accessible