| The Palast Hotel stood on the north-eastern angle of the Potsdamer Platz, facing the Friedrich-Ebert Strasse and the Leipziger Platz. It shouldn’t be confused with the Hotel Palast in East Berlin after the war. In 1943 the building on Potsdamer Platz was burned out during an Allied air raid on Berlin and was eventually demolished. Potsdamer Platz was 1 of the busiest intersections in Europe after 1920. It was a high-class hotel, like the others around Potsdamer Platz. During the Nazi period it became the headquarters of the Mittel Europäisches Reisebüro (MER; “Middle European Travel Agency”). This organization had been taken over and run by the Schutzstaffel (SS). It played an increasingly active role in the Holocaust; The MER also actively participated in the expulsion of Jews from Europe. Employees of the company submitted to Adolf Eichmann the proposal to transport Jews in special trains through occupied France and Spain to Lisbon, so that they could take ships from there to overseas. The MER management assessed this expulsion campaign as “very profitable.” The employees involved received special bonuses. With the beginning of the violent Nazi expansion policy, the company began transporting forced laborers. As early as spring 1939, it was involved in the transport of 7,900 forced laborers from the so-called Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. After the start of the 2nd World War, the company increased these numbers. In 1940, the MER alone accounted for 645 special trains with a total of 320,000 Polish farm workers who had been shipped to the German Reich for work. Aware of the profits to be made, the company then actively participated in the Holocaust. On July 25, 1942, the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo; “Secret State Police”) had 14 wagons driven from Düsseldorf to Theresienstadt. In response to a request from the Cologne MER branch, the Gestapo had reported the day before that 700 Jews and 16 guards would be transported. The MER then charged 16.60 Reichsmarks per person. The bill was addressed to the “Jewish Affairs” department of the Düsseldorf Gestapo. This department used confiscated Jewish assets, because there was no budget for the deportation of Jews. Ordered by a corresponding instruction from the Deutsche Reichsbahn (“German National Railway”) in 1942, the deportations of Jews from the Netherlands, Belgium and France to Auschwitz were to be handled by the Central European Travel Agency. The MER took over ticket sales and invoicing. It received a commission of 2 to 7 percent for its services in the deportation of Jews and in the transport of forced laborers. In contrast to the trends in the civilian economy, MER’s sales increased during the war years. In 1943, the company’s sales amounted to 343 1,000,000 Reichsmarks; In 1938, the peak pre-war year, this figure had been only 250 1,000,000 Reichsmarks. After the war, the MER had difficulty explaining this development without mentioning the transports of Jews and forced laborers. According to the audit report from November 1947 for the 1943 financial year, it was allegedly the “increased use of the higher carriage classes” and the destruction of the Reichsbahn ticket offices that were responsible for this increase in revenue. In addition, travelers had increasingly visited the MER offices in order to “correctly comply with the travel regulations.” Leipziger Platz was reduced to ruins during the 2nd World War and was once part of the no man’s land surrounding the Berlin Wall, but has since been reconstructed in its original configuration, albeit with modern architecture. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0519.jpg |
| Image Size | 513.30 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2030 x 1540 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | January 1, 1930 |
| Location | Palast Hotel |
| City | Berlin |
| State or Province | Berlin |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | Bundesarchiv |
| Record Number | 146-1998-012-36A |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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