BERLIN: Track 17

Arrived at the Grunewald urban rail station for a hike up the Teufelsberg (Devil’s Mountain). Paid my respects at Gleis (track) 17, from which thousands of Jews were shipped to concentration camps.

The pretty Grunewald station.

Track 17.

The rails to the camps.

Long metal grids lie along both sides of Track 17.

It’s a long stretch: Each grid section remembers a day’s shipment.

March 3, 1943. 1,732 Jews shipped to Auschwitz on a single day.

A woman at the site explained that Jews often place a stone atop a gravestone to show they were there.

Remembering those shipped Oct. 18, 1941, to Lodz in Poland..

Labeled “way out” from Track 17. The first solution was exclusion, taking away Jews’ citizenship, rights and property. The second solution was expulsion, encouraging or forcing Jews to leave Germany. The final solution was extinction. By 1942, for most Jews in Germany, there was no way out.