ANDREAS
Nico Beyer | DE | 2026 | German with UT
Contents
The Gleis 17 memorial in Berlin stands for planned deportation under the eyes of the wealthy population. Between memory and the present, ANDREAS' anger erupts: about the silence, the gaps in German reappraisal and about a country that does not seem to listen even after the Shoah.
ANDREAS was one of Europe's leading lifestyle journalists until everything changed in 2018. He takes in refugees and founds “Kreuzberger Himmel“, where needy people eat for free and women and men from countries in crisis work. With the organisation founded by him and Ulrike Lessig, „Be an Angel“, he supports refugees all over the world, both in Germany and abroad, with rescue operations, humanitarian aid, infrastructure support and much more. He receives the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his commitment. As a Jew, he struggles with Germany and finds his new home in Odessa.
27 January, Liberation of Auschwitz and International Holocaust Remembrance Day
27 January is a key day of remembrance in Germany and around the world. On 27 January 1945, the Red Army liberated the German extermination camp Auschwitz Birkenau, which has become a symbol of the industrially organised murder of European Jews. Since 1996, 27 January has been the official day of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism in Germany. Internationally, the day has been established as International Holocaust Remembrance Day in order to keep memories alive, strengthen educational work and oppose trivialisation and denial. This day is not only a reminder of the past, but also a mission of remembrance for the present.
Gleis 17 memorial (Berlin Grunewald)
The Gleis 17 memorial at Berlin Grunewald station is one of the most impressive places of remembrance in Germany, not because it seems monumental, but because it is shockingly inconspicuous: a platform, a disused track, silence. And yet it is precisely this place that is historically charged. Thousands of Berlin Jews were deported to their deaths from here during the Nazi era. The trains travelled on the Deutsche Reichsbahn and made it clear how closely infrastructure, bureaucracy and organised violence were linked. Track 17 thus symbolises the industrial logic of extermination and at the same time the fact that deportations did not take place in secret, but in the middle of the city, visibly and according to plan.
For a long time, there was no permanent form of commemoration at Grunewald railway station that made the systematic deportation of Berlin's Jews visible from this location. It was not until 1991 that a memorial - an 18-metre-long concrete block with the shadowy outlines of deportees embedded in it - was unveiled at the historic site. In the course of the critical examination of the function of the Reichsbahn during the National Socialist era, the Deutsche Bahn board decided to erect another central memorial. Since 1998, the memorial they designed at Grunewald S-Bahn station, Track 17, has commemorated the deportation transports of the Reichsbahn from 1941 to 1945 and invites visitors to engage with the specific history of this platform.
The design is particularly impressive. Metal plates are embedded along the edge of the platform, each documenting the date, destination and number of people deported. Remembrance is thus not cemented in abstract terms, but in concrete numbers. Journey by journey, name by name, number by number. Anyone walking along the platform goes through a chronology of the crime that is etched into the ground. The memorial makes it clear that each deportation was an event that was planned, organised and carried out, while life around these events continued almost as usual.
The surroundings also exacerbate the effect. The railway station is located in Grunewald, an affluent part of Berlin. It is precisely this proximity between everyday bourgeois life and historical crime that is difficult to bear. Gleis 17 confronts us with a central idea: the deportations did not begin in isolation, but at the heart of society. In Berlin, under the eyes of the people who lived there. This is precisely what makes Gleis 17 a place that allows no excuses.
Further information:
Director: Nico Beyer
Camera: Michael Mieke
Editing: Michael Mieke / Nico Beyer
Sound: Jude Dulake
Music: Christian Meyer
Grading: Pana D'argueta
Country: Germany
Year: 2026
Over 60sec.mentsh
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60secs.mentsh is a documentary film series that visualises Jewish life in Europe as a natural and enriching part of our society.
In collaboration with the renowned filmmaker Nico Beyer, we have developed 60sec.mentsh, a Europe-wide documentary film series that shows Jewish life in all its facets. We tell authentic stories of people who move, connect and challenge prejudices - in 60 seconds.
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