Holocaust train rolls into Berlin engulfed by row

By Dave Graham

BERLIN (Reuters) - A vintage engine steamed into Berlin on Sunday, hauling carriages filled with photos of smiling children and poignant last letters to loved ones -- the images and words of the youngest victims of the Nazi Holocaust.

About 160,000 have visited the train, a memorial to the millions of Jews and others carried off to their deaths by Adolf Hitler's railways in World War Two.

The train set off across Germany in November on an often tearful journey due to end, like so many of the Nazis' victims, at the notorious Auschwitz death camp in Poland

With just days to go before the "train of commemoration" terminates its journey on May 8 -- the day the war ended in Europe -- it has become embroiled in a major row.

Germany's current rail operator, state-owned Deutsche Bahn, refused to allow the train to halt in the capital's central station, offering instead the eastern Ostbahnhof.

Some critics have compared the heads of Deutsche Bahn with those of the Nazi-era Reichsbahn, which deported many of the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust.

Left Party parliamentarian Petra Pau said the "blockade" by the firm, and the travel charges it had imposed on the train were a reminder of the difficulties still faced when trying to shed light on Germany's past crimes.

"The horror of the Nazi regime cannot be forgotten. It would be a betrayal of the victims and the future," said Pau, a deputy speaker of the Bundestag lower house.