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 Jewish people were shipped to concentration camps.
Out front, the pretty Grunewald station gives no hint of Track 17 inside.
Track 17, a deceptively innocuous departing point.
The rails to the camps.
Long metal grids lie along both sides of Track 17.
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 may place a stone on the ledge to show they were there.
Remembering those shipped Oct. 18, 1941, to Lodz in Poland.
Between October 1941 and February 1945, more than 50,000 Jews were shipped to Auschwitz from here.
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.
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