Hanover Station Memorial

Hanover Station Memorial - This is the site of a former train station in Hamburg , from where trains to the eponymous city of Hanover used to depart, and in WWII this was where deportation trains departed carrying predominantly Jews to the ghettos and concentration camps in the east. Originally built in the 19th century and inaugurated in 1872, the station, Hannoverscher Bahnhof in German, lost its role as a passenger station in 1906 when the new Hauptbahnhof (main or central station) opened three quarters of a mile (1.2 km) further north. The Hanover station then became mainly a freight centre for the surrounding harbour infrastructure of the north bank of the Elbe River. The station’s dark connection began in 1940, when the first of a total of 20 deportation trains left from here with over 900 Sinti and Roma who were dispatched to a temporary labour camp at Bełżec (later the site of the first of the three death camps of Operation Reinhard ). Four more deportation trains in late 1941 took Jews from Hamburg to the ghettos in Łodź , Minsk and Riga . Of the remaining deportation trains over the course of the years 1941–1945, eleven went to Theresienstadt and four to Auschwitz , including one more train with Sinti and Roma. In total over 8000 people were thus sent on a journey that for most was one with no return. The vast majority of these people were murdered. The station building itself also became a victim of the war and was largely destroyed by bombs during Allied air raids and very few traces of it still survive. This includes a stretch of original rail tracks and part of a platform. In 2016/17 this site was converted into a memorial monument . The main part of this is a row of 20 plaques listing every one of the 20 deportation trains and the names of known victims. Additionally there is a separate memorial stone at the far end of the platform with a general dedication.