About this memorial
This site remembers the Jewish men, women and children whom the Nazi regime deported from Berlin between 1941 and 1945. It follows them, where the records allow, to the places where the regime murdered most of them.
Who this memorial is for
For the families of the people deported, many of whom are still searching for a name, a date or a last address. If you are one of them, write to us.
For the survivors and their descendants, who carry what no list records.
For Berliners, who live on the streets these people were taken from.
And for those who come after us. The deportations were not hidden. In the middle of the city, the Gestapo organised them, police officers guarded the trains, the Reichsbahn ran them, and the finance authorities seized and sold what people left behind. Knowing how it was done is how we learn from it.
How it is made
Every transport, place and person on this site carries its sources. Figures come from the Memorial Book of the German Federal Archives, the surviving transport lists, the deportation databases of Yad Vashem and the Terezín Initiative Institute, and the published research of historians, above all Alfred Gottwaldt and Diana Schulle's study of the deportations from the German Reich and Akim Jah's study of the deportations from Berlin.
Where sources disagree, we give the best-attested figure and explain the disagreement on the page. Where a number is not documented, we say so and do not estimate it: on the plate strip, those transports are drawn hollow.
Of the 187 transports recorded here, 149 are well documented, 35 partly documented and 3 still need further research. For 0, the number of people deported is not yet documented.
The documents
For most transports, the list the Gestapo drew up of the people on it survives. The originals are held by the Arolsen Archives, and the transport pages link to them. We will show the lists here, page by page, once our own copies are in place and the rights are clear. Documents held by other archives, such as the Łódź ghetto records and reports in Yad Vashem's archives, will be shown once those archives have given permission; until then the transport page says that they exist.
No photograph of a deportation from Berlin is known. The#LastSeen picture atlas of Nazi deportations lists Berlin, with more than 50,000 people deported, as "Keine Fotos bekannt": no photos known. Pictures captioned elsewhere as Berlin deportations show other cities. This site does not use them.
The images
The photographs on this site show the places as they were and as they are today, and some of the people as they lived. Each carries its source and licence; most come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences, and all are served from this site. A few were taken by the perpetrators, by the SS or for the Nazi press. They are marked as perpetrator photographs, because they show what the perpetrators chose to record, and are used only where they document something that no other image does.
Words
The records of the deportations were written by the people who carried them out: the Gestapo, the finance authorities and the Reichsbahn. Their language disguised what they did: deportation was "evacuation", the transports to Theresienstadt were "old-age transports", and a person's property was "secured". Where these terms are needed to find a transport in the records, we use them in quotation marks. In our own words, we say what happened and who did it: the Nazi regime deported these people, robbed them and murdered them.
Names
A name is the first thing this memorial gives back. We write names as people used them, with their birth names where known. From 1939, a decree forced every Jewish person in Germany to carry the additional name "Sara" or "Israel"; the transport lists record people that way. We leave these names out.
We publish a name only once it has been checked against the Memorial Book or the transport lists, and a biography only when it rests on sources we can cite. Biographical texts written by others, such as those of the Stolpersteine initiatives, are linked rather than copied, unless their authors have given permission.
What is not here yet
The Nazi regime deported more than 50,000 people from Berlin. Bringing every one of their names onto these pages, transport by transport, is the work of years, done together with the archives and initiatives that hold the records. Pages that are still incomplete say so.
Corrections and contributions
If you find an error, or if you know about a person who was deported from Berlin, such as a family member, a former neighbour or someone you have researched, please write toinfo@berlindeportations.com. Tell us your source if you can. We answer every message.
With thanks
This memorial rests on the work of the Federal Archives, Yad Vashem, the Terezín Initiative Institute, the Arolsen Archives, the Stolpersteine initiatives in Berlin, statistik-des-holocaust.de, the memorial at Gleis 17, and the memorial sites at each of the places named here.
Berlin Deportations is a Berlin Experiences project.