Berlin - A steam-drawn Holocaust memorial train is set to make four stops in the German capital, organizers said Saturday, a day before the event which has been at the centre of controversy.

A society has been touring Germany with the engine and two veteran carriages to highlight the German railways role in the Holocaust.

Deutsche Bahn (DB), which has organized a separate Holocaust exhibition of its own, refused to let the society's train into its gleaming new steel-and-glass central station, saying the smoke would trigger the smoke detectors - which apparently cannot be turned off.

Instead, the train will stop Sunday at another junction, the city's East Station, and proceed over the next 10 days to three other smaller Berlin stations including Grunewald Station in the west, a DB spokesman said.

Grunewald has a Holocaust memorial, marking a siding there as the site where many of the city's Jews were forced onto trains to concentration camps by the Nazis. Hans-Ruediger Minow, chairman of the society running the train, said it would stop "near" the siding.

DB said that for technical reasons, the train could not park on the actual siding, Track 17.

Holocaust memorial groups have attacked DB, charging it has been uncooperative.

The train is set to arrive May 8 in Auschwitz, the site in modern Poland of the Nazis' main death camp.