April 13, 2008
Ugly Row Over Finding Berlin Station
for Holocaust Train By Rohan Minogue
Berlin
An ugly row has erupted over finding an appropriate place for a
Holocaust remembrance train to halt when it arrives in Berlin
Sunday.
German Transport Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee has come down strongly
on the side of the association that has organised and found funding
for the "Train of Commemoration" in its battle with the state-owned
national rail company, Deutsche Bahn (DB).
DB has ruled out Berlin's gleaming new steel-and-glass central
station, saying the steam-powered train would trigger the smoke
detectors - which apparently cannot be turned off.
The company has also insisted on charging the standard three euros
($4.50) a kilometre for the train to use its network, as well as
hefty fees for the train to halt at stations for visitors to see its
rolling exhibition.
"A central place must be found in Berlin," Tiefensee said. "I call
on DB to adopt a constructive attitude."
The Berliner Zeitung daily was scathing: "DB is trying every trick
in the book to obstruct this commemoration of children deported in
the Nazi era."
The train, comprising an old steam engine and two carriages, is a
travelling exhibition documenting in word and image how some 12,000
children were murdered by the Nazis, many of them transported in
cattle trucks for days to their deaths in camps like Auschwitz.
After considerable pressure, DB finally relented and allowed the
train to stop at Grunewald in Berlin, the station from where the
Berlin transports to Auschwitz left between 1941 and the end of the
war.
But these days, Grunewald is an obscure suburban station in the west
of the capital, and the organisers remain determined that the train
should be allowed to stop at the showpiece central station to allow
many more visitors to see the exhibition.
They plan a demonstration on Saturday, leading from the Brandenburg
Gate to DB headquarters in a march of silence.
The train is to spend 10 days at various stations in the capital
before heading for cities throughout the east and then on to
Auschwitz in Poland where the journey ends May 8, the day that marks
the end of World War II in Europe.
Tiefensee has called on DB to donate back to the organisers the
100,000 euros it has charged them since the train began rolling
through Germany on Nov 8 last year.
And Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit has reminded DB that the Holocaust
was planned in Berlin and executed from there. Wowereit, who is gay,
is well aware that the Nazis also aimed to exterminate homosexuals.
"Berlin's Jews were systematically deported to the death camps, and
by train. For this reason, precisely in Berlin, it must be possible
for this commendable commemoration project to receive every
support," the mayor said.
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