Platform 17

Platform 17 is one of the most beautiful Holocaust memorials that I saw on my trip. Right outside of Berlin stands an original train station that the Nazis used to transport more than 50,000 of the German Jewish population from the Berlin area to ghettos and concentration camps.

Notice how the tracks get blocked off by the trees!

The first train on this line departed on October 18th, 1941, and most of these people were sent to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. After World War II concluded, the platform and its tracks were abandoned up until the 1990s when it was then converted into a memorial site. I arrived thinking it was just an abandoned train station, however walking up onto the platform is something way more symbolic than I had ever imagined. Along the platform's edge are different trains that took Jews to extermination camps and it shows how many Jews on each train survived. The highest number I saw was about 30. Right next to the edge on the platform are clay signs that say never forget in many different languages, even though some of them were broken, its message was received.

The train station was not just abandoned but turned into a symbolic memorial for those who were sent to a concentration camp on this very platform. The tracks are stopped on both sides where they planted tall green trees to show that this track will never be used again. It was amazing to see this, but hard to even imagine what this train station used to feel like.