Shadow film & suitcase installation
To mark the commemorative event ‘THEY WANTED TO LIVE!’, Theatre ANU is creating an artistic installation in front of and on the Gedächtniskirche.
Thursday, 15 October 2026
from 6.15 pm
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Berlin
Breitscheidplatz | 10789 Berlin
Admission is free
Team
Stefan Behr, Bille Behr
Video / Digital Art: Anne Leane Sturm
On 18 October 1941, the first so-called „Eastern Transport“ left Grunewald station. The National Socialist—
The lists and their many accomplices deported 1,013 Jewish women, men and children from Berlin to the ghetto
Litzmannstadt, the Polish city of Łódź, which was occupied by German troops. Before that, these people had to put up with
their hand luggage to the collection point at the Levetzowstraße synagogue by 15 October. Without rights,
deprived of their social standing and possessions, cast out of society and reduced to mere numbers—
Afterwards, the younger ones had to walk eight kilometres through the city centre to the
Grunewald freight yard. Under the pretext of resettlement, they were herded onto the train by the Gestapo
crammed together and transported eastwards by the Deutsche Reichsbahn.
Fearing further deportations, some 1,600 Jewish women, men and children subsequently took their own lives. Until the end of the Nazi dictatorship, Sinti and Roma, political opponents, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Confessing Christians, homosexuals and people targeted because of their beliefs, nationality, disability or illness were also persecuted, mistreated, deported and killed.
Across all of Berlin’s districts, 25 Litfaß columns featuring large-scale posters serve as a reminder of this civilisation—
the rupture and the fates it entailed. Photographs, Stolpersteine, commemorative plaques and short biographies...
Let’s put a face to these 100 people. At least 55,000 people in Berlin fell victim to this Nazi terror
Women, men and children were among the victims. From 13 October 2026 to 16 November 2026,
commemorated at the 25 advertising columns with commemorative events.
The launch of the overall project will take place on Thursday, 15 October 2026, at 7 pm, at the Ge- in Berlin
Memorial Church took place. The Protestant Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche parish, led by the Reverend Kathrin
Oxen, the Moabit-based association „Gleis 69 e.V.“, chaired by Dr Thomas Abel, and the regional Berlin
Stolperstein initiatives and other organisations are our partners.
For the speeches, it was possible to Dr Eva Umlauf, Auschwitz survivor and President of the International Auschwitzcommittees and Petra Rosenberg, Chair of the Berlin-Marzahn Forced Labour Camp Memorial, can be obtained.
The following are taking part in the programme Dr Christoph Kreutzmüller, deputy project leader of »LastSeen: Images’ «the Nazi deportations’, the actress Hanna Schygulla, the musicians Liz Erber & Heiko Michels, Lello
Franzen & Janko Lauenberger and Georg Schupelius, the Berlin State Opera Youth Choir featuring Hebrew songs, Members of the Spandau Youth History Workshop and eight Year 12 pupils from the Philipp-Melanchthon-Gymnasium in Herzberg (Elster) with her poetry slam performance »The past lives quietly when the present is silent«.
The Berlin-based »Theater Anu« is creating an artistic installation on the forecourt of the Gedächtniskirche
Installation. It is funded by the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf District Office in Berlin.
Guests of honour at the commemorative event are Michael Meisels, a Theresienstadt survivor, who as a baby, together with his
My mother and grandmother were deported on the last train from Anhalter Bahnhof on 27 March 1945, and
Prof. Dr Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, President of the World Council of Churches, which has 356 member churches in 120 countries
and more than half a billion Christians.
Ilg-GmbH, based in Stuttgart, which manages around 1,700 advertising columns in Berlin, is one of the media partners. The
The graphic designer Michael de Maizère designed large posters featuring 100 biographies, photographs and Stolpersteine.
The research assistant is Henrik Frankemölle, a forthcoming graduate of the interdisciplinary Centre for
Research into anti-Semitism at the Technical University of Berlin.
Support the public art project initiated by the director and cultural manager Günter Jeschonnek
the LOTTO Foundation Berlin, Jan Philipp Reemtsma, the Inge Deutschkron Foundation, the Berlin district offices of
Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf and Lichtenberg, the Documentation Centre for Flight, Expulsion and Reconciliation, and
the Foundation for Tolerance and International Understanding, Potsdam, and private donors.
FURTHER INFORMATION:
12 October 2026, 12:00: Press briefing
Venue: Documentation Centre for Flight, Expulsion and Reconciliation
Stresemannstraße 90, 10963 Berlin
You are welcomed by the Director of the Documentation Centre, Dr Roland Borcher, and the initiator and project manager
Günter Jeschonnek, the graphic designer Michael de Maizìere, Susanne Krause-Hinrichs (Managing Director of the Foundation
for Tolerance and International Understanding, Potsdam), Dr Christoph Kreuzmüller (deputy project leader of »LastSeen:’
«Images of the Nazi Deportations’) and André Schmitz (Chairman of the Board of the Inge Deutschkron Foundation; Kul-
(former State Secretary for Tourism)
On 16 October 2026, from 10.00 am to 11.30 am,
at the Walter-Rathenau-Gymnasium in Grunewald, Herbertstraße 2–6, 14193 Berlin
a discussion with around 200 pupils from this grammar school
and the equally long-established Hildegard-Wegscheider Grammar School.
The guests are Michael Meisels and Dr Eva Umlauf.
Günter Jeschonnek will be moderating the discussion.