Unknown vandals defaced a Holocaust memorial at Putlitz Bridge in the Moabit neighborhood of Berlin, authorities said Tuesday.
Police officers called to the scene discovered white paint and packing tape on the site, which commemorates the deportation of more than 32,000 Jews from Berlin to Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
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Archival: Holocaust memorial at Putlitz Bridge, Berlin
(Photo: ChristianSchd, Wikipedia - CC-BY-SA-3.0)
Officers were able to remove the paint, but the tape could not be fully cleared. Berlin police have launched an investigation, German media reported.
The memorial stands near the former Moabit freight yard, the city’s main deportation site under the Nazi regime. Between January 1942 and the end of the war, Jews were deported from tracks 69, 81 and 82, bound for ghettos and extermination camps in Eastern Europe.
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The original memorial, consisting of a staircase leading skyward and a small plaque, was installed in 1987 by artist Wolmer Hassa. In 2017, a new memorial was inaugurated on the site: a grove of 20 pine trees intended to grow tall among surrounding industrial buildings and mark the area as a place of remembrance.
The site has been repeatedly targeted with antisemitic graffiti and vandalism. In August 1992, it was severely damaged and had to be dismantled and rebuilt in March 1993. A plaque on the nearby bridge railing commemorates that attack.
Another incident occurred in November 2024, when a remembrance wreath was thrown onto the train tracks and several memorial candles were burned. At the time, the local district council condemned the act in a joint statement, calling it “a severe insult to the memory of Holocaust victims” and “a blow to peaceful coexistence and the culture of remembrance in society.”