Open Monument Day 2026: Moabit Freight Yard Memorial Site

Without these requirements, the parts of the station used for the deportations would never have taken this form. From the outset, therefore, the station was not a neutral structure, but the result of institutional networks in which civilian and military interests were intertwined.

Under National Socialism, this infrastructure became part of a tightly knit system of state coercion.

The Deutsche Reichsbahn played a central role in this:

it organised and co-ordinated transports, provided carriages and seamlessly integrated the deportations into its regular operations. Thus, a place for the movement of goods also became a hub in the system of persecution. Between 1942 and 1944, more than 30,000 Jews were deported from here to ghettos and extermination camps – having previously been interned in assembly camps within the city and driven through the streets of Moabit to the station, in full view of the city’s public.

After decades of oblivion, a memorial site has been established at this historic location to keep the memory of the deportations alive. The redesign by raumlabor.berlin reveals what had long remained hidden: the physical traces of the railway tracks, the topography of the site, and the spatial proximity of everyday life and crime.

As part of Open Monument Day on 12 and 13 September 2026, regional historian Andreas Szagun will be offering guided tours covering everything from the military origins of the station complex, through the role of the Reichsbahn in the system of persecution, to the creation of today’s memorial site – whilst examining the scope for action available to those involved.

The memorial site invites visitors to understand the seemingly ordinary as part of historical networks of violence and to keep the memory of these events alive.