Trains to Life – Trains to Death

About

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. 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.

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. 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.

In January 2023 the monument was vandalized, graffiti on the statues of children appearing to show mosques on the body of one child and the suitcase of another.