Bahn Flyer engl. - Deutsche Bahn AG

DB AG
REMEMBRANCE, ILLUSTRATION
AND COMMEMORATION
Memorial platform 17 at Grunewald station
Deutsche Bahn's memorial was inaugurated on 27 January 1998.
For years there have been intensive public discussions as an
appropriate means of taking a critical look at the crimes of Nazi
Germany. Attention has also focused on how Deutsche Bahn deals
with its heritage of German railway history and how Deutsche
Reichsbahn participated in the Holocaust and war of extermination.
Since it was founded in 1994, Deutsche Bahn AG has undertaken
to remind people of the crimes committed under Nazi rule and to
inform them about the role played by Deutsche Reichsbahn during
the Nazi regime.
Memorial platform 17 at Grunewald station in Berlin has been
created by Deutsche Bahn as a place of remembrance and commemoration.
From 1941 onwards, this was the station from which
most of Berlin's deportation trains left the city.
The DB Museum in Nuremberg has been created as a place for
visitors, employees and trainees to inform themselves and come to
terms with what happened.
The touring exhibition "Special Trains to Death. Deportations with
Deutsche Reichsbahn" continues Deutsche Bahn 's commitment to
on-going remembrance, illustration and commemoration.
www.db.de/geschichte
Deutsche Bahn would like to thank the following for their friendly support:
Max Ansbacher, Jerusalem
Herbert Mai, New York
Franz Rosenbach, Nuremberg
New Synagogue Foundation Berlin – Centrum Judaicum
Deutsches Technikmuseum, Berlin
Documentation and Culture Centre of the German Sinti and Roma,
Heidelberg
Federal Archives, Berlin
Memorial House of the Wannsee Conference, Berlin
Gesellschaft für Unternehmensgeschichte e.V.
(Society for Corporate History), Frankfurt am Main
Fils et Filles des Déportés Juifs de France (FFDJF), Paris
Exhibition team and authors:
Andreas Engwert, Susanne Kill, Diana Schulle, Alfred Gottwaldt
Serge and Beate Klarsfeld: "Aus Frankreich deportierte deutsche und österreichische
jüdische Kinder" (German and Austrian Jewish children deported from France).
Recommended further reading:
Raul Hilberg: "Sonderzüge nach Auschwitz" (Special trains to Auschwitz), Frankfurt/Main 1987
Alfred Gottwaldt/Diana Schulle: "Die Judendeportationen aus dem Deutschen Reich 1941-
1945" (The deportation of Jews from the German Reich 1941-1945), Wiesbaden 2005
Alfred Gottwaldt/Diana Schulle: “’Juden ist die Benutzung von Speisewagen untersagt’.
Die antijüdische Politik des Reichsverkehrsministeriums zwischen 1933 und 1945" (‘Jews
are not allowed to use the dining cars’. The anti-Jewish policy of the Reich Ministry of
Transport between 1933 and 1945), Berlin 2007
Romani Rose (editor): "Der nationalsozialistische Völkermord an den Sinti und Roma".
(The National Socialist genocide of Sinti and Roma). Catalogue for the permanent
exhibition in Staatliches Museum Auschwitz, Heidelberg 2003
Lothar Gall/Manfred Pohl (editor): "Die Eisenbahn in Deutschland. Von den Anfängen bis
zur Gegenwart" (The railway in Germany. From the beginnings to the present), Munich 1999
Götz Aly: "Im Tunnel. Das kurze Leben der Marion Samuel 1931-1943" (In the tunnel. The
short life of Marion Samuel 1931-1943), Frankfurt/Main 2004
For use in schools:
DB Museum: "Im Dienst von Demokratie und Diktatur. Die Reichsbahn 1920–1945" (In the
service of democracy and dictatorship. The Reichsbahn 1920-1945). Catalogue for the
new permanent exhibition, Regensburg 2002
Fritz Bauer Institut (editor): "Konfrontationen, Bausteine für die pädagogische Annäherung
an Geschichte und Wirkung des Holocaust" (Confrontations, modules for an
educational approach to the history and effect of the Holocaust), No. 5: "Deportationen"
(Deportations), Frankfurt am Main 2003
Imprint Issued by
Deutsche Bahn AG
Communications
Potsdamer Platz 2
10785 Berlin
www.db.de/geschichte
oeffentlichkeitsarbeit@bahn.de
January 2008
SPECIAL TRAINS TO DEATH
Deportations with
Deutsche Reichsbahn
An exhibition by Deutsche Bahn AG

SPECIAL TRAINS TO DEATH
Deportation of Jews from Mainfranken, Würzburg April 1942
Federal Archives Würzburg
Deportations with Deutsche Reichsbahn
Deutsche Reichsbahn was responsible for the deportation of innumerable
people, and thus directly involved in the Holocaust. Without
the railway, the systematic murder of the European Jews, Sinti and
Roma would not have been possible. During World War II, some
three million people from almost the whole of Europe were transported
by train to the Nazi extermination camps.
The exhibition "Special Trains to Death. Deportations with Deutsche
Reichsbahn" is intended to remind visitors of the immeasurable suffering
caused to these people. The exhibition presents the fates of
individual children, women and men who were taken from their
native towns and transported to the death camps. Interviews with
survivors depict the atrocious conditions on the trains, while documents
and graphics illustrate how these transports were organised
by Deutsche Reichsbahn and show the operational procedures.
The touring exhibition was drawn up in cooperation with the Centrum
Judaicum and Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin. It is based
on the permanent exhibition at the Deutsche Bahn Museum in
Nuremberg which shows the history of Deutsche Reichsbahn during
the National Socialist era. The photos and biographies of the Jewish
children deported from France were researched and compiled for
the exhibition by Serge and Beate Klarsfeld.
In July 1942, repairs on the railway line to the extermination camp
Sobibor delayed deportation of the people living in the Warsaw
Ghetto. And so through his personal adjutant Karl Wolff, "SS Reichsführer"
Himmler approached the Deputy General Director of Deutsche
Reichsbahn, State Secretary Albert Ganzenmüller. With Ganzenmüller's
consent, this was soon followed by the deportation of several thousand
men, women and children every day to the recently erected
extermination camp Treblinka. The cooperation is documented by
correspondence.
Steffi Bernheim F. F. D. J. F.
Steffi Bernheim was born on 11 January 1930 in Berlin. The Bernheim
family fled from Germany to France and lived in Paris in rue
de Provence 60. Steffi was arrested during a large-scale raid and
eventually deported to Auschwitz with transport No. 23 on 24
August 1942. Her mother Rebecca had already been brought to
the extermination camp; father Walter and brother Norbert followed
with transport No. 57 on 18 July 1943.
Brothers Gert and Hans Rosenthal
Centrum Judaicum
On 19 October 1942, a transport
left Moabit freight station in
Berlin with 959 people for Riga
in Latvia. Most of the people
who had been in the special
train were taken into the surrounding
woods and shot dead
immediately on arrival.
There were 140 children among
the victims, also including Gert
Rosenthal (born 24 July 1932)
who had lived as an orphan in a
Jewish children's home. Gert
was the younger brother of Hans Rosenthal who later became
known as an entertainer (1925 – 1987). Seventeen year-old Hans
went into hiding and lived in a garden shed where he remained
concealed until the end of the war.