..March 2017.. ..Dresden..
..The backyard of Hansa Straße 3 led to a railway platform at the which was used to transport Jewish and Roma families, political opponents and POW’s to and from Dresden. As WWII progressed more forced labor was needed to maintain the war industry. Some of that labor arrived at this platform which was secluded from public view because it was a part of the Alte Leipizger Bahnhof, an industrial railway complex.
The deportations which took place two streets away at the Neustadt Bahnhof are well documented. But there is little documentation of the deportations and arrivals of people from this railway junction because the area was controlled by the military and wasn’t visible from the street. People entered on the street through Hansa Str. 3 and a back door opened steps away from a waiting freight car on the industrial tracks.
Today this area is populated by a trailer park community of artists. It’s still secluded from street and there are no markings of what happened here. I learned about it from an elderly man who had heard about what happened from others who lived through the war. He was able to find the little documentation available to confirm the stories.
This industrial railway area was not hit during the bombing of Dresden although it was only a 10 minute walk from the surrounding areas which were totally devastated by the attack. This area was one of the only not to be scorched.
The adjacent Alte Leipizger Bahnhof functioned during the GDR times (East Germany) for industrial use but was closed after reunification. It now stands in ruins after 25 years of neglect. Ironically it now resembles what a war scared building might look like even though it escaped WWII without being hit.
