Berlin, Germany

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Berlin-Grunewald is a railway station in the Grunewald district of Berlin.

It is served by the S-Bahn line S7

History

The station opened on 1 August 1879 on the Wetzlarer Bahn from Berlin to Blankenheim and Wetzlar, the southwestern continuation of the Stadtbahn. It was originally named Hundekehle after a nearby lake and received its current name on 15 October 1884, when the former Grunewald station reopened under the name of Halensee. The entrance hall modelled on a castle gate was finished in 1899. Berlin-Grunewald was connected to the S-Bahn network on 11 June 1928.

Gleis 17

Gleis 17 memorial

Starting on 18 October 1941 the adjacent goods station until February 1945 was one of the major sites of deportation of the Berlin Jews. The trains left mainly for the ghettos of Litzmannstadt and Warsaw, from 1942 directly for the Auschwitz and Theresienstadt concentration camps. On 18 October 1991 a monument was inaugurated at the ramp leading to the former freight yard. The Deutsche Bahn had a memorial established on 27 January 1998 at the historic track 17 ("Gleis 17"), where most of the deportation trains departed

The Deportation Memorial

Memorial plaque, Berlin-Grunewald station

Between October 1941 and February 1945 more than 50.000 Jews were deported by Nazis to extermination camps from the Grunewald freight railway station and murdered. Nowadays, memorials from the district of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and the Deutsche Bahn ("Gleis 17") commemorate this dark spot in Grunewald's history. The area is accessible by the Berlin-Grunewald station.

Gleis 17, Grunewald