"Trains to Life – Trains to Death" Memorial
A bronze group of seven children stands outside Friedrichstraße station, frozen between two destinies. Two figures face the trains that carried them to safety in England, while five turn the other way, toward the trains that carried Berlin's Jewish children to their deaths.
About this place
Unveiled on 30 November 2008, this memorial by sculptor Frank Meisler marks the exact place where two opposite journeys began at the same platform. From Friedrichstraße station, the Kindertransport carried Jewish children to safety in Britain, beginning with the first train of 196 children that departed for England on the night of 30 November 1938, days after the Kristallnacht pogrom. From the same Berlin rail network, the deportation trains later carried tens of thousands of the city's Jews east to the ghettos and death camps. Meisler captures this fork in fate with seven near life sized figures cast in bronze. Two children, rendered in a lighter tone, look hopefully toward rescue, while five, cast in darker grey, stand turned away toward annihilation. The work is deeply personal: Meisler was himself one of the rescued children, evacuated through this very station in 1939, while his parents were murdered at Auschwitz. It is a place that asks us to remember both the saved and the lost.
Key facts
- 196 children — Boarded the first Kindertransport train from Berlin on 30 November 1938
- 10000 rescued — Jewish children saved by the Kindertransport before the war closed the borders
- 2008 year — Frank Meisler's memorial was unveiled, 70 years after the first transport
📍 Friedrichstraße 140, 10117, Berlin