| Trains to Life – Trains to Death | |
| Other Language 1: | German |
| Other Title 1: | Züge in das Leben – Züge in den Tod |
| Artist: | Frank Meisler |
| Type: | Sculpture |
| Material: | Bronze |
| Height Metric: | 225 |
| Metric Unit: | cm |
| Imperial Unit: | in |
| City: | Berlin, Germany |
| Coordinates: | 52.5199°N 13.3877°W |
| Mapframe: | yes |
| Mapframe-Zoom: | 13 |
Trains to Life – Trains to Death 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.[1] 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.[2] 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.[3]
In January 2023 Pro-Palestinian protestors who illegally protested despite a ban on protests on the New Year eve vandalized the monument spraying graffiti on the statues of children and drawing mosques on their bodies.[4] [5]