Gleis 17: Berlin’s Grunewald Deportation Memorial
In the western Berlin district of Grunewald, adjacent to the Grunewald S-Bahn Station is perhaps Berlin’s most evocative memorials to the horrors of the Third Reich.
When you arrive at the station, just follow the signs for Gleis 17, or Track 17.
Grunewald was one of 3 train stations in Berlin where Jews were expelled from the city and sent to ghettoes and labor and concentration camps.
Most were murdered or died from inhuman conditions.
The memorial was dedicated in 1998 under the direction of the Deutsche Bahn, acknowledging the role of its predecessor, the Reichsbahn, in these atrocities.
The memorial features 186 cast steel plates embedded along the platform edge, all in chronological order.
Each plate records the date, the destination, and the number of deportees on a specific transport.
Sometimes only a few dozen passengers are recorded, but often it was over one thousand.
The tracks are weathered, rusty, and overgrown with vegetation.
And I found the tracks leading into the wilderness to be an apt metaphor for the realities of these unfortunate souls almost a century ago.
On the side of the tracks, on a slope leading up from the station’s main entrance, is a monument that predates this memorial.
It’s a long concrete wall with the indentations of human forms walking to the platform, which I took as representing a void of humanity.
And according to the memorial marker, over 50,000 Jews were deported from Berlin’s deportation stations during the reign of the Third Reich.
In my opinion, there’s something particularly moving about this location, as you are on the spot where this terrible history played out.
The Gleis 17 Memorial is listed under WW2 Memorials in my free Berlin trip-planning app.
The memorial is located at the Berlin-Grunewald S-Bahn Station.
