Memorial on the ‘Square of Jewish Deportees’

Jews from Hamburg began to be deported to ghettos and extermination camps on 25 October 1941. The central assembly point for the deportees was the former Masonic lodge on Moorweidenstrasse. From there, the deportees were taken to the Moorweide, a highly visible park in the centre of Hamburg. While other squares were later used as deportation assembly points, this site in particular represents the systematic murder of the Jewish residents of Hamburg.

In 1982, the Hamburg Cultural Authority commissioned the artist Ulrich Rückriem (born 1938) to design a memorial stone. The monument, which was dedicated on 21 January 1983, consists of a granite block made up of seven stones. Closer inspection reveals that fractures have been built into the monument, and the seams between the individual stones form a ‘T’ shape. The monument brings up associations with the Western Wall in Jerusalem and the Hebrew letter ‘tav’ (‘T’), which can represent ‘suffering’ or ‘death’. Text panels explain the history of the site.