* Trains to Life, Trains to Death (image above, bottom right)
Sculpture by Frank Meisler
This image is of a sculpture dedicated to the 10,000 Jewish children spirited out of Nazi Germany to Britain 70 years ago. It was designed by artist and eyewitness Frank Meisler. The sculpture depicts children about to board a train as part of the “Kindertransport,” which is how Meisler himself survived. Many of those children never saw their parents again.
The memorial stands outside Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse train station. The first emergency transportation of Jewish children from Germany and Austria to England occured on Dec. 1, 1938) from this very train station. Less than a month after the Kristallnacht pogrom of Nov. 9, 1938. The transports stopped with the outbreak of World War II in September 1939.
Meisler’s sculpture has a counterpart outside Liverpool Street Station, which is where he arrived at the end of August 1939 with 14 other children from his home city of Danzig, today Gdansk, Poland.