The WWII sites in Frankfurt, Germany tell a typical story—one of a city that deported its Jews during a violent Nazi occupation and was eventually bombed to destruction. As a result, Frankfurt is known today as a modern city filled with skyscrapers but devoid of its original charm. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea (mug of beer?), but I happen to love it here. I consider myself lucky to get to visit every year.
You’ll find a large array of museums and memorial sites that tell you all about this city’s World War II past and that of its people. The next time you’re here for a work conference (which is usually why people visit) be sure to carve out some time to visit some of the WWII sites in Frankfurt.
Frankfurt in World War II
Like I said, Frankfurt’s World War II story is one we’ve heard so many times. Here are five major things to know about before visiting Frankfurt’s WWII sites:
Bombing of Frankfurt
Because of its status as an important industrial center (that’s well connected by railways), both the British Royal Air Force and the US air forces bombed Frankfurt repeatedly throughout the war. At the time, Frankfurt had one of the largest half-timbered historical centers in all of Germany. This was near-completely wiped out by the bombings. Combined, these bombing raids also killed more than 5,000 Frankfurt residents.
The Allies dropped so many bombs on Frankfurt, in fact, that construction workers still frequently find unexploded bombs here. At a nearby soccer stadium (2024), at a construction site in the northern part of the city (2021), at an airport construction site (2020), on the grounds of the convention center (2020), and outside the European Central Bank headquarters (2019), for starters.
Battle of Frankfurt
As Nazi Germany’s reign was coming to an end, Allied forces moved into Frankfurt and fought for control of the city. Led by the US 5th Infantry Division and supported by the 6th Armored Division, they engaged in house-by-house combat from March 26-29, 1945. Moving slowly through the city, they eventually fought off Germany’s 7th Army and took Frankfurt for the Allies.
Deportation of Jews
Before the Nazi era, Frankfurt was home to Germany’s largest Jewish population—30,000 Jews, 5% of the total population. Owing to violent attacks, persecution, boycotts and restrictions, and more, most of Frankfurt’s Jews had fled the city by the time war officially broke out in 1939.
Nazi authorities soon deported those who remained in the city—to ghettos or to concentration or death camps in the East. Most of Frankfurt’s Jews ended up in Theresienstadt. Many others were murdered in the extermination camps of Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Sobibor (to name a few).
Of Frankfurt’s pre-war Jewish population of 30,000, only around 100-200 Jews remained in the city after the war. Today, there are about 6,600 Jews living in Frankfurt (out of a total population of around 773,000).
Frankfurt after the war
Frankfurt’s postwar reconstruction lasted decades, really only ending in the last few years. While some German cities voted to rebuild in their original medieval style, Frankfurt took a more modern approach, which you’ll notice immediately.
While out exploring the WWII sites in Frankfurt, you’ll undoubtedly pass through the Römerberg—the “historical” city center, lined with colorful half-timbered buildings. But this “historic center” is not actually historic at all. In an effort to add some charm to this otherwise “charmless” city, Frankfurt’s leaders opted to rebuild its historic center according to its original specifications. What you see today in Frankfurt’s “New Old Town” dates back to just 1986.
Birthplace of Anne Frank
Though most people associate her with Amsterdam (where she hid during the war), Anne Frank was actually born here in Frankfurt on June 12, 1929. The family left the city in 1933 after the Nazi Party took power.
Also read: Tips for Visiting the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam
Map of WWII sites in Frankfurt
This map contains all the WWII sites in Frankfurt I mention in this post. To save this map: Click on the star ⭑ next to the map’s title to save in your Google Maps. To use this map: When you get here, open Google Maps on your phone, click “Saved” at the bottom, then click “Maps.”
If you’ll be driving to Frankfurt, check out rental car deals here. Otherwise, you can see all train schedules and rates here on Bahn.com.
Get a Frankfurt Card
The city of Frankfurt offers a sightseeing pass called the Frankfurt Card. This pass covers all public transportation within Frankfurt and offers significant discounts at all the city’s most popular attractions, museums, tours, and more. (Including the ones mentioned in this post, and the trains you’ll need to take to visit some of them.) They come in 1-day and 2-day versions.
See all the available discounts here and pick one up for your visit.
WWII museums in Frankfurt
Frankfurt has some excellent museums related to World War II; I hope you have time to visit them all. Check them out here:
1. Jewish Museum (Jüdisches Museum Frankfurt)
Frankfurt’s Jewish Museum takes you through 900 years of Jewish history in Frankfurt in two museums. Museum Judengasse focuses on all the earliest history, while the Jewish Museum Frankfurt (the one I’m going to focus on) centers around local Jewish history from 1800 until today.
This museum is housed at the historic Rothschild Palais, once inhabited by the most famous and powerful Jewish banking family of the 19th century. The museum and its permanent exhibition were completely renovated in 2020.
The permanent exhibition spans three floors. It includes exhibits on the evolution of Jewish life in Frankfurt over the past 200+ years (including World War II and the Holocaust). You can also visit the Frank Family Center—a special exhibition room that contains personal artifacts, documents, and photographs from the family of Anne Frank.
2. Historical Museum (Historisches Museum Frankfurt)
Frankfurt’s comprehensive Historical Museum addresses all of Frankfurt’s history in one incredibly large space. While you should definitely spend as long as you can here and see everything, for our purposes I’ll only talk about the sections that focus on the most recent century.
You’ll be able to see all kinds of unique artifacts related to Frankfurt’s WWII history, what civilian life was like during the war, and World War II in general. There’s a section dedicated to the Frank Family here as well with a special focus on Anne’s older sister Margot. In the giant recreation of Frankfurt that the museum is known for, be sure to look through the holes on the side of the base to see what the city looked like before and after the bombings.
3. Bunker at Friedberger Anlage
Also associated with the Jewish Museum is the Bunker at Friedberger Anlage. This above-ground bunker sits on the foundation of the synagogue that once stood here. Inside, you’ll find exhibits on the history of Frankfurt’s Jewish Quarter, the former synagogue, and its destruction in 1938.
You can visit the bunker on your own or opt for one of the guided tours (in English). The bunker closes in the winter and, unfortunately, is not barrier-free. It opens on Wednesdays and Sundays only beginning in late April.
Memorials & other WWII sites in Frankfurt
There are also tons of great memorials here in Frankfurt where you can learn more about the city’s WWII history at some of the original historical sites. Check them out here:
4. Anne Frank’s first homes
Anne Frank was born in Frankfurt on June 12, 1929 and lived in the house at Marbachweg 307 until March 1931. From here, the family moved just 1.5km away to the house at Ganghoferstraße 24. They lived at this address until 1933 when they left for Aachen (and soon after, Amsterdam).
Both of these homes are privately owned today but both still offer some information. At Marbachweg 307, you’ll find an informational panel explaining the building’s history as the former Frank family home as well as an early photo. At Ganghoferstraße 24, a memorial plaque hangs on the side of the house facing the street that reads:
In this house lived Anne Frank, born on June 12, 1929 in Frankfurt am Main. She died as a victim of National Socialist persecution in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. Her life and death – our obligation. The Frankfurt Youth.
5. Book burning memorial
On May 10, 1933, the local Nazified youth held a large book burning in the center of Frankfurt’s Old Town. They stood around the large fire giving the Nazi salute. They burned works from such authors as Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway, Hellen Keller, and other “corrupting foreign influences” they deemed “un-German.” On this night, Nazi university students held massive bonfire book burnings in 33 other cities throughout Germany including Berlin and Regensburg.
Today, you can find a large round memorial on the ground in the center of the Römerberg. It features a well-known quote from German-Jewish writer Heinrich Heine:
That was just a prelude. Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people too.
For more on Nazi book burnings and a short video on why totalitarian regimes often target culture, see this page: encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/book-burning
6. Neuer Börneplatz Memorial Site
Just a short walk from the Römerberg will bring you to the Neuer Börneplatz Memorial Site behind the Museum Judengasse. This memorial consists of a large gravel space filled with trees around a large cube made from pieces of the original synagogue’s foundation.
Surrounding the memorial space is an outer wall that contains 11,908 memorial blocks that honor Frankfurt’s Holocaust victims. Each of the blocks features a victim’s name, their birth and death dates, and the name of the camp at which they were killed.
To know what each of these blocks signifies is important, but to see how far they stretch around this wall is eye-opening. (The names go around the outside of the wall too.) Something else you’ll see here that’s interesting is a collection of street signs. These show how this area has changed names throughout history.
7. Memorial at the Grossmarkthalle (Gedenkstätte Großmarkthalle)
Before the war, Frankfurt’s Großmarkthalle was your standard market hall, filled with stalls for selling fruits and vegetables. But it also had one other thing the Nazis coveted—its own railway connection. Ergo, starting in 1941, the Gestapo began using this building to facilitate its mass deportations of Jews.
When you get here, you’ll see how central and accessible this area is, which is why it was so useful for this purpose. And because of its large underground cellar, the Gestapo could detain, rob, and beat hundreds of Jews out of sight. It was from this building that the Gestapo deported Frankfurt’s Jews to the ghettos and extermination camps.
I found the memorial here to be one of the more unique ones I’ve ever seen. There are so many layers. You’ll find quotes from survivors etched into the ground as you approach the memorial (some in English, some in German). The history of the site is etched into a glass wall behind which you’ll see the ramp that leads down to the cellar. You can even visit the cellar used to carry out the deportations, but only on one of the guided tours.
Across the walkway you’ll find the former railway station, also covered in memorial quotes. On the ground, you’ll find more quotes along with lines carved into the concrete showing where the original rail lines were that drove the city’s Jews to their deaths.
8. IG Farben Memorial
When the main building of what is now Goethe University Frankfurt opened in 1930, it actually served as the largest office building in the world and headquarters of IG Farben, the largest chemical company in the world at the time.
It wasn’t long before IG Farben buddied up to the Nazis and got involved in what they became famous for—the development of Zyklon-B, the deadly chemical used in the Nazi gas chambers.
After the war, IG Farben disbanded, largely due to its role in the murder of millions of Jews and others. American forces occupied the building which then served as headquarters of the Allied Command in Europe and General Eisenhower’s office.
Today, you can see two large memorial plaques on either side of the main entrance steps. (English on the left, German on the right). These explain the history of the building, of IG Farben and its contributions to the Holocaust, and a quote from Jean Améry—Austrian writer and survivor of both the Fort Breendonk and Auschwitz concentration camps.
For more on this topic, pick up this book: Hell’s Cartel: IG Farben and the Making of Hitler’s War Machine
9. Wollheim Memorial
Situated just next to the university’s main entrance (over on the left side of the property) is the Wollheim Memorial. It’s named for Norbert Wollheim, a concentration camp survivor who was forced to work for IG Farben at Auschwitz.
The memorial contains photographs and video footage of others imprisoned in the concentration camps that tell their stories. Inside the memorial you’ll see a quote from Wollheim: “We are saved but we are not free.” The large numbers on the outside are Wollheim’s prisoner number.
10. Stumbling stones
Like most cities in Germany and throughout Europe, you can find stumbling stones (stolpersteine in German) all over Frankfurt. These small brass stones are inlaid in the ground outside the last known residence of a Holocaust victim. They typically contain the person’s name, their birth and death dates, as well as their fate and/or the camp where they were killed. A few easy ones to find are:
- Adolf Moritz Steinschneider @ Untermainkai 20 (along the river near the Jewish Museum)
- Jella Held @ Marbachweg 339 (near Anne Frank’s first house)
Next to the Neuer Börneplatz Memorial Site you can find a collection of stumbling stones along with a description of the former site. The top stone reads:
Here stood, from 1829 to 1942, the hospital and nursing home of the Israelitic Health Insurance Companies / 1938, expropriated by the city of Frankfurt / From August/September 1942, collection point for deportations / 166 Jews and women abducted from here and murdered
11. Roma and Sinti Memorial
Just off the Römerberg, on the side of the building between two restaurants is the Roma and Sinti Memorial plaque. It explains (in German) how the Nazi regime murdered several hundred thousand Roma and Sinti, and how they subjected more than 20,000 of them to “racial biology” investigations, forced sterilization, detention, and torture. (Before they then killed them in the extermination camps.)
It continues: Of the Roma and Sinti living in Frankfurt at the time, 172 were interned in camps, 8 were involuntarily sterilized, 174 were deported to Auschwitz where at least 89 were murdered.
It also adds that, as of 1947, two of the people involved in those experiments were then employed by Frankfurt’s city health office. They (obviously) were never held accountable for their disgusting crimes. Their names: Robert Ritter and Eva Justin. The building where this plaque is located was once the Frankfurt Health Bureau.
12. Memorial to the Victims of National Socialism
On the corner of St. Paul’s Church (facing Berliner Str.) you’ll find a memorial plaque on the wall as well as a statue of a man kneeling on a foundation. Both commemorate “The citizens of Frankfurt who resisted the barbarism of National Socialism.”
At the top of the plaque is a woman’s face. This is Johanna Kirchner, a vocal opponent of the Nazi Regime. Born April 24, 1889 in Frankfurt, she was beheaded for “treason” on June 9, 1944 at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.
Beneath the sculpture of a man who appears to have his hands bound, you’ll find the names of the concentration camps where Frankfurt’s resistance fighters were imprisoned and/or killed.
More info for your visit to Frankfurt
- Hotels: Find great places to stay on Booking.com (my go-to). Expedia and Hotels.com are worth checking too. VRBO is best for apartment rentals.
- Rental cars: Check out the best local rental car deals here.
- For more local tours, check out all the options from Viator and Get Your Guide.
- Don’t forget a Germany guidebook and this must-have Germany customs and culture guide!
Like this post? Have questions about visiting the WWII sites in Frankfurt? Let me know in the comments below. Have a great time in Germany!
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