Elif Kayi, Z Word’s European press reviewer, reports on how the “Train of Commemoration” is being greeted across Germany.

A mobile exhibition on a train which commemorates the thousands of Jewish children deported during the Holocaust pulled into Berlin’s Ostbahnhof station this past Sunday with large lines of visitors awaiting it - and a bitter political controversy in the background.

The “Train of Commemoration project was created in October 2007. The exhibition was first displayed in Frankfurt on 9 November 2007, to mark the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, when the Nazi regime unleashed a massive pogrom against Germany’s Jews. Since then, it has stopped at various stations across Germany on its way to the site of the Auschwitz concentration cap in Poland, where it arrives in May.

From the outset, the exhibition has been in conflict with Germany’s state-run railway, Deutsche Bahn AG. In March, the railway refused to allow the train to use the main station in Hamburg, claiming that its old steam locomotive was a fire risk. Deutsche Bahn wanted to shift the train to Hamburg’s Altona station, but protests resulted in the train being allowed to use the main station for one day.

Tensions were even greater in Berlin. Again, Deutsche Bahn pointed to technical problems - this time concerning the rails, which were apparently not suitable for the locomotive - but the train eventually came to a stop at the Grünewald station. Access to the main Berlin central station, the brand new Hauptbahnhof, remained closed.

Politicians protested vigorously. Protests among the politics were strong. André Schmitz, Berlin’s State Secretary for Culture, described the behaviour of the Deutsche Bahn as “absolutely beyond understanding, shameful and provincial. “

Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit called on the board of directors of the Deutsche Bahn to support the project. Wowereit said that Berlin Jews had systematically been brought to the extermination camps by the Nazis “indeed with the railway.”

Moreover, Berlin is a symbol of the Jewish deportation. The journalist Susanne Gannott wrote in the daily Tageszeitung: “The fact that the train goes through the middle of a city where the crimes were perpetrated is evident, especially in Berlin: here, in the former capital city of the Reich, were the institutions that organised the Holocaust. Here lived the largest Jewish community in Germany.”

The tensions are not restricted to the locations of the exhibition. Deutsche Bahn collects fees for the stay as well as for the use of the railways and the renting of the rail cars. According to the organizers of the Train of Commemoration, the fees cost more than 70,000 Euros for each stop.

The Deutsche Bahn declared that it would instead donate 100,000 euros to a Jewish organization. Stefan Kramer, General-Sevretary of the Central Committee of the Jews in Germany (Zentralrat der Juden) described this as latent antisemitism: “It serves antisemitic prejudices, according to which one can easily make the Jews quiet with 100,000 Euros.”