Koppenplatz

Koppenplatz is a small, wheelchair-accessible park in Berlin’s historic Scheunenviertel. Its bronze memorial commemorates the round-ups of Jewish people before their deportation to concentration and extermination camps. The surrounding neighbourhood became a centre of Berlin’s Jewish community after a Prussian royal order in 1737 moved many Jewish residents here. Scheunen once stood nearby, storing straw outside the city because it posed a fire risk.

An Armenfriedhof, or cemetery for poor people, occupied this ground until the late 1830s. Christian Koppe, a city adviser, partly gave that cemetery its name. Hermann Mächtig designed the park, and Erwin Barth later reshaped it in 1927. French prisoners of war built underground air-raid shelters here by 1940, leaving a slight slope after their entrances were sealed.

A statue called Geschwister appeared in 1968, while the present memorial followed in 1996. Karl Biedermann created the bronze sculpture, which stands alongside a poem by Nelly Sachs.