Holocaust, WWII & Third Reich Sites in Berlin

Inaugurated in 1841, Anhalter Bahnhof was one of Berlin’s most important train stations. And known as the Gateway to the South. During the Nazi era, it is estimated some 500,000 people fled the country from here. From 1942 to 1945 over 9,600 Jews were sent from here to Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia. In the final months of Second World War the building was destroyed. A new museum telling the story of exile will open on this site in 2026.

The WWII bunker on Schöneberger Straße near Anhalter Station was intended to shelter up to 3,000 commuters in the event of an air raid on Berlin. Today it houses the exhibition ‘Hitler – how could it happen’. With text, historic photographs and film, on three of the bunkers’ five levels, the rise of and demise of Hitler is documented in 40 separate displays. The exhibition has the only model of the Führerbunker. This self-guided tour takes between two and three hours.

Formerly known as Opernplatz (due to the State Opera), this public square had its name changed to Bebelplatz on 31 August in 1947 as a reminder of the Nazi book burnings that began here on the night of 6 May 1933, with the burning of books from the Institute for the Science of Sexuality library. A few nights later this event escalated into similar such actions in university towns around the country on 10 May 1933. An estimated 20,000 books were burned here. A plaque marks the site, as does the installation The Empty Library by Micha Ullman, where a glass plate has been set into the cobblestones that looks onto empty bookcases large enough to hold 20,000 book.

The ‘Bender Block’ is a complex of buildings that was used by various military departments up until 1945. This was the site of Hitler’s 3 February 1933 speech on ‘Lebensraum in the East’. Later, on 20 July 1944, officers involved in an attempt to overthrow the National Socialists were executed in the courtyard. Today that space is a memorial to them. The centre, in the former headquarters of the Army High Command on Stauffenbergstrasse, is home to exhibitions, both permanent and temporary, that tell the story of the resistance to National Socialism.

The goods platform station of Grunewald S-Bahn is where an estimated 50,000 Jews from Berlin were transported to their death. From here, one of three deportation stations in Berlin, Jewish citizens were deported to labour and concentration camps in Riga, Warsaw, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Theresienstadt. Platform 17, or Gleis 17, has a metal installation that preserves the platform and records the dates of the departures, the number of people and their destinations.

Built in 1914, this luxury, lakeside villa on the Wannsee was sold to the SS Foundation in 1941. Less than a year later, they used it to host the Nazi leadership on 20 January 1942 to formulate what would become known as the ‘Final Solution’. Following the war, it was a school and only designated a memorial in 1982. The villa opened as a museum in 1992 on the 50th anniversary of the conference. A permanent exhibition, entitled The Meeting at Wannsee and the Murder of the European, as well a rotating special exhibitions is free to enter.

With the aid of multimedia and interactive displays, the Jüdisches Museum allows visitors to learn about the history of Jews in Germany from the Middle Ages to the present. Consisting of two buildings, Berlin’s Jewish Museum is the largest Jewish museum in Europe. Visitors enter through the 18th century Kollegienhaus and make their way to the striking building designed by Daniel Libeskind. The ‘Axis of Exile’ leads from one building to the other and on to the ‘Garden of Exile’.

Built between 1891 and 1895 to honour the first German Kaiser, Wilhelm I. At the time, the bells were the second largest in Germany, after Cologne Cathedral. During WWII they were melted down for munitions. During an air raid in 1943 the top of the main spire broke off and roof collapsed. Plans to demolish the ruined church were strongly opposed. The church is open daily and free to visit. Guided tours are available, also free, of the interior of the tower ruins.

In the centre of Berlin, this is Germany’s principal memorial to the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. There ae wo parts to the monument. Above ground is the very striking and thought-provoking field of stelae, 2711 in total. Underground is an information centre, which examines the persecution and extermination of Jews across Europe. The memorial is located on what was the death strip of the Berlin Wall. During WWII this area was the very heart of Hitler’s killing machine. Specifically, Goebbel’S villa and bunker were situated in this space.

Dedicated on 2 September 2014, this memorial is for the mentally and physically handicapped people who were murdered by the Naz Euthanasia Programme. Although official figures indicate there were 70,000 patients in care murdered, unofficial estimates suggest the number was much higher, around 300,000. The programme, Aktion T4, was named after the department’s address at Tiergartenstrasse 4. An open-air memorial with various media recounting the stories of individuals, including audio and film footage.

Next to the tourist entrance cabin for the Reichstag are 96 cast iron plates, each a few centimetres thick. Set vertically in the pavement and close to one another, each plate remembers the members of Reichstag of the Weimar Republic who were murdered by the National Socialists between 1933 and 1945. The thin edge of the plates record the parliamentarians’ name, date of birth, place where murdered and their political affiliation. The memorial was erected in September 1992.

Inaugurated in 2008, the memorial to homosexual men and women persecuted by Nazism lies on the eastern edge of Tiergarten directly opposite the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The concrete cube, measuring 3.60 m high and 1.90 m wide, is a reference to the Holocaust Memorial. A window into the cube shows a film on loop showing two men hugging and kissing – a reminder that the Nazi’s outlawed such acts of intimacy between members of the same sex in 1935. A nearby information plaque, in German and English, outlines the persecution of homosexual at the hands of the Nazis, and how the end of the war did not bring an end to the discrimination.

Perhaps one of the most significant WWII sites in Berlin. Following the declaration of surrender on 7 May 1945 in Reims, here on the night of May 8 the supreme commanders of the Wehrmacht signed the unconditional surrender with representatives of the Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain and France. From 1945 to 1949, the building housed the head of the Soviet Military in Germany. Today it is a museum that focuses on the Eastern Front, and the only museum in Germany with a permanent exhibition about the war of extermination against the Soviet Union.

During WWII 12 million people from around Europe were forced to work in the German economy. Labouring and living under appalling conditions. They were housed in specially constructed camps of barracks. Only one such camp has survived in Berlin, in the south east of the city. Over 400 forced labourers from Italy were among the detainees here. Today the camp is a documentation centre on Nazi forced labour. Poignant and moving exhibitions tell the stories of the men and women incarcerated here and elsewhere in Berlin during the war.

Built between 1884 and 1894, this iconic building with its glass dome has been home to the parliament of the German Empire, the Weimar Republic and for the National Socialists – until it was destroyed by fire in 1933. Renovation was completed in 1999, and it is now the second most visited attraction in Germany. It is possible to climb to the top of the dome, visit the Plenary Chamber and have a meal at the Rooftop restaurant. The Reichstag is free to visit, but advance registration is required. Take a guided tour that includes registration.

Hitler’s megalomaniacal plans for a new Berlin at the heart of a Greater Germanic Empire included monumental structures, including an enormous triumphal arch. French forced labourers were required to create a load bearing body to test the soil conditions for the weight of the arch. They built a solid concrete cylinder, 21 m in diameter, 14 m high, and extending 18 m into the ground. A viewing platform allows you to see this sole surviving remains of Nazi urban planning for all angles.

In a quiet and peaceful corner of Tiergarten, opposite the Reichstag, is a circular basin with a triangle at its centre. Around the rim of the basin the poem Auschwitz by Italian Roma Santino Spinello are engraved. An estimated 50,000 Roma and Sinti men, women and children were persecuted and put to death by the Nazis. An open-air exhibition adds a personal dimension with the biographies of nine members of Roma and Sinti communities around Europe. These are stories of persecution, murder and resistance, and the continued fight for civil rights recognition.

Nothing above ground, and very little below ground, has survived of the so-called Führerbunker. Today, an information panel stands near the location of the emergency exit. With historic photos, a layout of the bunker and a map, the panel explains the area’s history and counters some of the myths about the bunker.  This was the area of the Chancellery, the buildings of which were destroyed by the Soviets to remove all Nazi landmarks. Over the years, various attempts were made to destroy the bunkers – the last time these remnants were seen was during the construction of the residential buildings that began at the end of the 1980s.

Topographie des Terrors in central Berlin is an indoor and outdoor exhibition space detailing the horrors of the Nazi regime. The site was the headquarters of both the SS and Gestapo. Who not only planned many atrocties here, but so too were prisoners tortured in the Gestapo cellar. Before May 1933 this was the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais. The area was heavily destroyed at the end of the war, but recent excavations have uncovered the cellars and other basement elements.

Just outside Friedrichstraße train station in Berlin is the Trains to Life – Trains to Death bronze installation by the Israeli architect and sculptor Frank Meisler. The memorial depicts two groups of children that represent the contrasting fate of Jewish children during the Nazi era. On 1 December 1938, 190 children departed from Friedrichstraße station for England under the kindertransport scheme. Many more children were deported to death camps around Europe.