Gestapo Museum

Yesterday some friends and I went to the Nazism Documentation Center in Köln. It is in EL-DE house, a building that was used by the Gestapo as a Prison, Interrogation and Execution Center.

The upper floors house the usual collection of Photographs, Documents, and assorted Paraphernalia which was interesting but very similar to other Museums. What was most powerful for me was the basement, where the original prison cells still remain.


During the war approx 90% of Cologne was destroyed - The major building left standing was the Kölner Dom, an amazing (even for an Atheist) Gothic Cathedral which was built from 1248, and is one of the largest churches in the world. It was only spared demolition by allied bommers so that they could use it as a landmark for orientiering.


So... where was I...

EL-DE house was somehow spared desctuction and in the years after the war, the cells were used as storage and archive areas until it was turned into a Museum in 1988.

The stone cells are tiny (around 3meters x 2meters), and sometimes held up to 20 people! The walls of most of the cells are still covered with the writing of the people that were held there and a selection were translated on the walls opposite the cells. It was these messages that I found most heart wrenching.

The people writing them had no idea if they would be getting out alive and if they would ever see their families again. Even if the Gestapo didn't execute them, a large number died from diseases from the overcrowding.

There were all sorts of messages, from bewilderment about why they were there, to despair, to rage, to longing for their loved ones or homeland. Some wrote messages so that the world would know what happened there, some expressed regret that they didn't cherish their freedom when they had it, others wrote deeply personal messages that I felt a little intrusive reading - A bit like opening someone elses diary.

That night, I tried to imagine what I would write on my 10cm by 10cm patch of wall if I was in a dark, crowded cell, listening to tortured screams, bombing raids, and the sounds of executions, eating my piece of bread in the morning and wondering whether I would be alive that night.

I could not decide what I would write,

and I wept for the people that had to.