Berlin renames section of Dorotheenstraße to Yad Vashem Street

Background: The Wannsee Conference of 1942

January 20, 2027, marks the 85th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference. At this meeting in a villa on the Great Wannsee in 1942, high-ranking National Socialist officials discussed the systematic murder of up to eleven million Jews in Europe. The aim of the meeting was to accelerate the implementation of the genocide.

The choice of date for the renaming is therefore no coincidence, it was stated from the Rotes Rathaus (City Hall). Kai Diekmann, Chairman of the Friends of Yad Vashem, said: "The symbolism of the date is enormous. There could hardly have been a better day for the renaming."

Diekmann added that with the renaming, Berlin is sending a strong signal: "With this, Berlin is sending a strong signal against antisemitism and for the preservation of the memory of the crime against humanity committed in the name of Germany." The initiative for a Yad Vashem Street in Berlin had previously originated from the Friends of Yad Vashem.

Decision-making in the Senate and the Bundestag

A resolution by the Berlin Senate enables the Mitte district to officially rename the relevant section of the street. The Friends of Yad Vashem explicitly welcomed the Senate's decision and the announced date.

There is also approval at the federal level: The Bundestag had already approved the renaming through a resolution in the Council of Elders. Bundestag President Julia Klöckner (CDU) said: "Street names shape our everyday memory. The naming of Yad Vashem Street is therefore far more than just a change of street name."

Symbolic Power in the Government District

Klöckner also emphasized the global significance of the memorial site: "Yad Vashem stands worldwide for the remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust and the commitment not to let the unimaginable be forgotten." Yad Vashem is the international Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

Wegner stressed that Berlin's culture of remembrance should remain unmistakable. The renaming shows that the memory of the Holocaust and the crime against humanity committed in Germany's name is a firm and unshakeable part of German history.

With the new address directly on the edge of the government district, the Berlin naming simultaneously acquires a political-symbolic dimension: anyone who enters Yad Vashem Street in the future will reach the Reichstag, the seat of the German Bundestag, just a few steps away.

Berlin's Governing Mayor described the project as a gesture of responsibility. The city wants to make it clear that it is also visibly anchoring its historical responsibility towards the victims of the Holocaust and their descendants in the cityscape.