Nazi rule destroyed Berlin 's Jewish community , which numbered 160,000 before the Nazis came to power . After the pogrom of Kristallnacht in 1938 , thousands of the city 's Jews were imprisoned . Around 1939 , there were still 75,000 Jews living in Berlin . The majority of German Jews in Berlin were taken to the Grunewald railway station in early 1943 and shipped in stock cars to death camps such as the Auschwitz , where most were murdered in the Holocaust . Only some 1200 Jews survived in Berlin by hiding . Approximately 800 Jews survived in Berlin 's Jewish Hospital . Causes for their survival range from bureaucratic infighting to hospital director Dr. Walter Lustig 's relationship with Adolf Eichmann , the Nazis ' bizarre system for classifying persons of partly Jewish ancestry and German leader Adolf Hitler 's ambivalence about how to handle Jews of German descent to the simple fact that the Nazis needed a place to treat Jews
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
History of Berlin