Kreuzberg is a district of West Berlin, Germany. Kreuzberg was founded in 1920 as part of the reorganization of Berlin into twenty boroughs, and the borough was named for a hill which was, in turn, named for the Iron Cross which sat atop an 1821 monument to the Napoleonic Wars. While Kreuzberg was one of Berlin's smallest boroughs, it was also historically its most populous, and, before World War II, it was home to a large Jewish community. From 1942 to 1944, the vast majority of Kreuzberg's Jews were deported to their deaths during the Holocaust, and their homes and businesses were seized and given to ethnic Germans. Kreuzberg's industrial district was destroyed by Allied bombing during the war, and, after the war, low-quality housing was built, making the area a prime target for immigrants coming to Germany. During the 1960s, Kreuzberg became a neighborhood of students, artists, and immigrants, and it became a center of the counterculture and punk rock movements. After the reunification of Germany in 1990, Kreuzberg returned to being at the center of Berlin and was subjected to gentrification. By 2020, Kreuzberg had a population of 153,135 people, many of whom were of Turkish descent. Kreuzberg's counterculture tradition led to the district being a stronghold of the Alliance 90/The Greens party.
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