Trains to Life – Trains to Death | |
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German: Züge in das Leben – Züge in den Tod | |
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Artist | Frank Meisler |
Type | Sculpture |
Medium | Bronze |
Dimensions | 225 cm (89 in) |
Location | Berlin, Germany |
52°31′11″N 13°23′16″E / 52.51986°N 13.38773°E |
Trains to Life – Trains to Death ( German: Züge in das Leben – Züge in den Tod) is a 2.25 meter outdoor bronze sculpture by architect and sculptor Frank Meisler, installed outside the Friedrichstraße station at the intersection of Georgenstraße and Friedrichstraße, in Berlin, Germany. [1] It is the second in a series of so far five installations also on display near train stations in London, Hamburg, Gdańsk and Hook of Holland.[ citation needed]
The sculpture depicts two groups of children. One group is a pair of children symbolizing those saved by the Kindertransport, which brought 10,000 Jewish children from soon-to-be Nazi-occupied countries in Eastern Europe to safety in the United Kingdom and other countries. [2] The other group consists of five children, who represent the 1,600,000 Jewish and non-Jewish children brought by Holocaust trains to the concentration camps and later killed there. Meisler himself was among those saved by the Kindertransport. [3]
On January 2023 Pro-Palestinian protestors who illegally protested despite a ban on protests on the New Year eve vandalized the monument spraying graffiti on the statues of children and drawing mosques on their bodies. [4] [5]