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Berlin

A memorial to lost children

Former Jewish children's home, Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin - memorial artwork in lobby

A neighbourhood centre in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg once catered to a thriving Jewish community: from 1910 to 1942 the large, handsome building in Fehrbelliner Straße served as a kindergarten, creche, reading room and orphanage.

A former Jewish children's refuge, Berlin

Tragically, at least 49 of the children who used it are known to have died in concentration camps, along with many adults who worked there.

A photographic memorial to the Jewish history of this former children's home, Prenzlauer Berg
Photographic memorial in a former children's home, Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin

A memorial to the building's past in the form of photos and documents lines the walls of a first floor corridor - one of Berlin's least known sites of remembrance, as well as one of its most haunting.

The space is often eerily deserted, and although visitors are welcome to peruse the office-like hallways where the images are hung, this permanent exhibition has an oddly impermanent feel to it.

The photographs, however - taken in the centre between 1934 and 1938 - speak for themselves, and although, today, the building again serves the needs of Prenzlauer Berg locals, the heart-breaking history of the children who once lived here makes it one of the city's most moving memorials.


See also:
Berlin's borrowing store
A little known Jewish memorial


Community centre (Stadtteilzentrum) and memorial to a former Jewish orphange: Fehrbelliner Straße 92, 10119 Berlin


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