German Third Reich Historical Visit 2013

[Karl Welteke]

Sanssouci Park, Potsdam

Our goal on this day, the 12th April 2013, was to visit Sanssouci Palace and it is covered in another album. The palace is located in the Sanssouci Park, Potsdam, and all of it was the home of the Prussian Kings who became the Kaisers of the Second German Reich which ended thru the First World War and that lead to WWII. This set of 20 images is about the park:
www.flickr.com/photos/44567569@N00/sets/72157634240595729/

Here are some sample images:



01- The original Brandenburg Gate in Potsdam, west of Berlin. Don’t confuse it with the one in Berlin. This one was erected after the 7 year war around 1763 to celebrate the victory over Austria, France and Russia by Frederick the Great. We parked near by. This was new to me, I didn’t know about this gate.



02-This map shows our walking route and where things are in the park. The Brandenburg gate is also indicated.



03-The New Chambers and the windmill, shot from our walk down the main walkway. We believe that wooden structure at left is covering a stature. We couldn’t figure out why some statures were covered and others not.



04-A look towards the right and we are looking at the Oangerie Palace built by the Prussian King Wilhelm the IV.



05-19-The -New Palace-. The building of the palace commenced at the end of the Seven Years’ War, to celebrate Prussia’s success. The war is also variably referred to as the Third Silesian War, owing to the dispute over Silesia. In an architectural form, Frederick the Great sought to demonstrate the power and glories of Prussia attributing it as fanfaronade, an excess of splendor in marble, stone and gilt.
For the King, the New Palace was not a principal residence, but a display for the reception of important royals and dignitaries. Of the over 200 rooms, four principal gathering rooms and a theater were available for royal functions, balls and state occasions. During his occasional stays at the palace, Frederick occupied a suite of rooms at the southern end of the building, composed of two antechambers, a study, a concert room, a dining salon and a bedroom, among others. (This is a Wikipedia description)



06- This picture is from Wikipedia Commons, Photo-Wolfgang Pehleman. Aerial view of the Sanssouci Park, New Palace, Orangerie Palace and Sanssouci Palace



07-This image is also from Wikipedia Commons and it shows the Sanssouci Peace Church. We seen this tower at the entrance where we entered but didn’t go and look at it closer

Note: 1
Here is the Wikipedia URL for the Sanssouci Park, fast short and interesting:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanssouci_Park

Note:2
Thanks okla for your kind words, enjoy summer started today!

[Karl Welteke]

Sanssouci Palace 2013 April the 12th.

Home of the Prussian and German Rulers!

Learning my German History I often heard about the home of Frederick the Great and now I had the privilege to visit it. It was the home of the Prussian and German Royalty between the mid 1700 to 1918. The first World War ended that and we were on the march to WWII. We are on our 4th day into the history of the 3rd Reich. We walked around the palace and took the tour inside.
This may be too many pictures, they are 54 in this album But I wanted to show the whole Palace
www.flickr.com/photos/44567569@N00/sets/72157634280079486/

Note: the map in the previous Sanssouci Park segment shows you where the palace is!

Here are some sample images:



01- Going up the last terrace to the Sanssouci Palace.



02-Sanssouci, we are at the right place. I believe it means -Without Worry-. Frederick the Great, this was his retreat from Government worries. He liked the French language and had French scholars stay at Sanssouci or in Potsdam.



03-Looking down the terraces and to the south from the palace.



04-On the north side of the palace are the colonnades and also the entrance to the inside tour. Even on this cold and wet day there was line and we had to wait our turn.



05-The south side of Sanssouci and we are looking from west to east.



06-This picture is from Wikipedia and this is how Sanssouci looks like in the summer.



07-Sanssouci inside, I didn’t take too many pictures. It seems all the rooms are similar, high ceilings, marble, lots of gold paint or what ever it is and a lot of paintings, statures and antique furniture.



08-In the hall ways is the same situation.



09-This picture is from Wikpedia and shows what kind of company the King kept. Third from the left, in the purple coat, is Voltaire; next to him in the red uniform Christoph Ludwig von Stille, then the king. The other guests are Giacomo Casanova, Jean-Babtiste Boyer d’Argens, La Mettrie, the Keiths (James Francis Edward Keith & George Keith, 10th Earl Marischal), Friedrich Rudolf von Rothenburg, and Francesco Algarotti.


Note: Here is the Wikipedia page for the Sanssouci Palace:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanssouci

[Karl Welteke]

Schwanenwerder Island, Goebbels Home in Berlin

Other NS Personalities and a French 1871 connection on Schwanenwerder Island



On our 4th day into the Third Reich history (2013 April the 12th ) we also visited Schwanenwerder Island, Inselstrasse 10. This was Goebbels home for about 10 years. Since our return home we have learned that other NS personalities had property there also. Goebbels home was razed and the property was on loan to the International Aspen Institute. Between Goebbels and Albert Speers houses we noticed a large column with a historical background and I took pictures of that.

In this album are 19 images:
www.flickr.com/photos/44567569@N00/sets/72157634297477496/

Here are a few sample images but many images are from the www:




01-Inselstrasse 10, Goebbels home for 10 years. Standing in front of the property this is the left side.
Inselstrasse 10 has several structures and I don’t have a good picture of the whole lot. (Insel means island in German).




02-This shot is a little further to the right of the Inselstrasse 10 property, the former property and home of the Goebbels and family. This property was leased to the Aspen Institute, so this place got an American connection. A Memorial Plaque is at the gate post of Inselstrasse 10. I think the Aspen Institute was an organization that promoted sound democratic policy decisions. And Mr. Shepard Stone of the Aspen Institute must have made a great impression on the German leaders here.



03-This picture came from this news article with this link:
www.deseretnews.com/article/700146074/Former-Goebbels-property-for-sale-in-Berlin.html

But the whole article is posted here:
BERLIN — A posh island property on a Berlin lake where Adolf Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, lived for almost a decade and held lavish parties with Nazi bigwigs is up for sale at auction.
Bids are now being taken for the 70,000-square foot (6,440-square meter) plot on Schwanenwerder island, an exclusive area in western Berlin where Goebbels and his family lived from 1936 to 1943.
There is no minimum bid for the property, which has 272 feet (83 meters) of waterfront around the corner from Berlin's popular Wannsee lake beach, and is dotted with tall oaks, pines and other trees.
"The market will decide what it sells for," Irina Daehne, a spokeswoman for the real estate agency selling the property for the city, said Wednesday.
Berlin reserves the right, however, to decide not to sell if the bids are too low — or to reject the top bidder if it turns out they are somehow interested in glorifying the Goebbels past.
"We want to avoid a Nazi use or anything related," Daehne said. "We can say no and we will say no; nobody wants the right-wing scene there."
Schwanenwerder island was first developed at the end of the 19th century, and quickly became home for some of Berlin's wealthiest families — many of them Jewish.
Shortly after the Nazis came to power in March 1933, the local chapter of the brown-shirted SA stormtroopers raised a swastika flag atop a water tower on the island to intimidate the Jewish residents.
As they fled over the following years, members of the Nazi elite moved in, including Hitler's architect, Albert Speer, and Hitler's personal doctor, Theodor Morell. Hitler himself entertained the idea of moving there, but never did.
Goebbels bought his property in 1936 from the chairman of the board of Deutsche Bank, Oscar Schlitter, paying 270,000 Reichsmarks — a tidy sum at the time, said Sabine Weissler, who is part of a group of researchers documenting the history of the island.
He lived there with his wife Magda and children until 1943, then moved to a villa near Bogensee outside of Berlin, but returned to Schwanenwerder in March, 1945, in the final phases of the war, Weissler said.
"Then he moved later into the Fuehrerbunker and after that everyone knows," she said, referring to the Goebbels' decision to murder their six children with cyanide before killing themselves the day after Hitler's suicide.
After the war, the villa on the Schwanenwerder was ransacked first by Soviet, then American soldiers and eventually demolished.
On its foundation was built a modest-looking 7,650-square foot (710-square meter) brick bungalow in the 1950s, which still sits on the site. It was the headquarters of Berlin's Aspen Institute, an American think tank, from 1974 to 2010, which rented it from the city of Berlin before relocating downtown.
None of the buildings on the site — also including a large garage and a boat house — are considered historical landmarks, so the new owner can tear them down and begin again, Daehne said.
Bids are being accepted until Aug. 22.
Coincidentally, Goebbels' villa near Bogensee — which belongs to the state of Brandenburg — is also to be sold as part of a larger trance of land, but it is not yet clear when it will go on the market, Daehne said.



04-This news paper carried the same story but had this different and interesting picture. This is the link:
www.cnsnews.com/news/article/former-goebbels-property-sale-berlin



05-The map where everything is. I get the impression the upper 10 Thousand were hanging around western Berlin.



06-Schwanenwerder Island, house locations of Goebbels and Albert Speer are indicated. Hitler had a property but it was never used. The Tuilerien Column is indicated also.


After Steve and I made it home we communicated with further questions about our trip. And Steve came up with the following link called WWW.THIRDREICHLOCATIONS.COM and here is the URL for this relevant page:
www.thirdreichlocations.com/BERLIN/INSELSTRASSE/Inselstrasse.html

This page says and shows that we were at the right address for Goebbels home but Albert Speer had a house near by and it still stands but is now a police station, that even Hitler had a property here but was never used by him.



07-Goebbels house from Third Reich Locations.Com



08-Albert Speer House from Third Reich Locations.Com



09-Hitlers property from Third Reich Locations.Com




10- This column got my attention and came here to have a closer look. It is between Inselstrasse 10, Goebbels and Inselstrasse 8, Albert Speer. The Tuilerien Saeule (column). It turns out, it has nothing to do with the NS Regime. But the French occupiers (1945) were thinking about shipping it back to France.



11-It is a fragment of a French Palace, important in their history, that was destroyed and burned by French political unrest in 1871. Some parts of the palace ended up on the open market and a well to do German bought it and placed it here to beautify and develop the Schanenwerder Island.



12-Next to the Tuilerien Column is this information plaque. My shot is hard to read so I cropped it and show it hereafter in parts so it can be read. It is in German though, but maybe they will look.



13-Here I only present the 1st Paragraph. This first paragraph says that Mr. Wessel, an entrepreneur, bought the island in 1882 and developed it as a villa residential area. The 2nd paragraph tells the story where and what it was; then how it got here and that it was to bring some art and class into the villa development. The 3rd section tells that the Germans were successful to convince the French in 1945 that this was not German booty taken from France in 1871. In 1956 it came under Government protection as an antique historical item. Since then the community has been struggling to maintain it.



18-The location of the Tuilerien Saeule (Column) is one of the few places where one get an unrestricted view of the Havel River from the island. This boathouse is below the Inselstrasse 8 address, the former Albert Speer house. It is now a police station, maybe they are the water police and they park their boat or boats in there.

[Karl Welteke]

Cecilienhof, 1945 Potsdam Conference Venue

At this place my future was decided by Stalin and the other two leaders could do nothing but agree. 25% of Germany (the real East Germany) was to go to Poland and Russia, with 11 million Germans to be driven out, on foot and with what they could carry. My mother and three children (1 to 3 years old) were among them. We actually fled on a train on the 30th of Jan. 1945 which had brought in Volkssturm soldiers because the front was outside the village. The red Army already had reached the Oder River north and south of us and my village was about 50 km east of the Oder.
An additional 25% was to become a communist dictatorship (East Germany). So this place has a real personal meaning in my life.

Wikipedia says this about the Cecilianhof:
Schloss Cecilienhof is a palace in Potsdam, Brandenburg, Germany. Cecilienhof was the last palace built by the Hohenzollern family that ruled Prussia and Germany until 1918. It is also famous for having been the location of the Potsdam Conference in 1945, in which the leaders of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States took important decisions affecting the shape of post World War II Europe and Asia. Cecilienhof has been part of the Palaces and Parks of Potsdam and Berlin UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990.

My friend Steve and I visited Cecilienhof on 12th of April 2013. In this album are 25 images of that visit:
www.flickr.com/photos/44567569@N00/sets/72157634335703912/


Here are some sample images:



01-The front of Cecilienhof from the SE, we walked here from the west. I was surprised to learn this palace was built during World War One.



02-Cecilienhof was in a great location. The location of Cecilienhof is in the greater area of Potsdam and western Berlin. It is obvious that many of the upper 10,000 lived in this area.



03-Cecilienhof is Historical Place and a Museum. All rooms and hallways open to guided tours have many information displays about the conference, war history, the Prussia/German Royal Family etc. This is about the influence and interest of the Soviet Union.




04-This is the room of decisions. Here I lost 50% of my country, 11 to 13 Million Germans lost everything, their home, their community and their future. Some estimates are a million Germans lost their life while fleeing from the Red Army onslaught, deportation to Russia and willful misconduct by the victors. Yes, of course Germany started the war and was responsible for millions and millions of lives lost or murdered. The picture is not too good but it’s mine.



05-The Allied Control Council was established here and this is the first meeting. It became the new German Government. It didn’t work smoothly for long and Germany had 4 new Governments soon thereafter.



06-It’s ironic that the Lion of Briton lost big in the British National election during the time of this conference.



07-During this conference it was agreed to send a stern warning to Japan, surrender or!!! But they didn’t’ listen. The bomb was built with Germany on their mind by the US Policy makers.



08-Going-ons during the Potsdam Conference.



09-Time out for some photos.



10-The Red Army, Soviet Union Flower Red Star is still there. This shot is a little different and I also shot it the normal way and it is in the album above.



11-On the grass near the flower Red Star stands this information sign

Note:
If interested it is easy to find more information about this important and interesting place in the www.

[okla]

Hey Karl....Did you get the opportunity to return to your family village or its site? Maybe you mentioned it in your narrative. If so, I overlooked it. I would think if you did get the chance to visit the site (wouldn't this be in Poland since the "new" border is the Oder River???) of your "roots" that it would have been a very moving experience for you, even if you have no memory of the locale. Cheers.

[Karl Welteke]

OKLA, You Asked An Interesting Question.

Yes, I have been back to my home village and it is a moving experience. But most Germans have resigned themselves to the fact that we started the war, lost it and have to pay a price. And that our Nazi Leaders were criminals which makes it even more relevant.

Your question gave the idea to answer you and all with these pictures how the war effected the 13 Million Germans (from everywhere and the figure is approximately only) who were forcibly displaced by my example.

Also I show a map below how the war flowed around my home area and Indicated 4 location we visited on the 2013 visit which will be later segment to be presented.

The pictures and descriptions:



01-This is my family home in Tempel, Templewo. It is from a friend in 2009, the front and the ends have been renovated. Also the entrance is covered again like before 1945. It’s unique, two friends I met on Corregidor, have traveled there to take pictures for me. My warm thank to these friends.



02-This is how the house looked before the war but I don’t know the exact date. The houses left and right of our house were homes for our farm employees.



03-This picture is from between 1942-44. My father is the 2nd from left. The occasion, the women is the youngest sister of my father and she is getting married. The farm has to cover many of the expenses. That is our coach. My father was inducted into the Vokssturm, late 1944, the husband of the sister into the Army. Both fell somewhere around Berlin, sometime after the 17th April 1945.



04-The name of my village was Tempel, it was established sometime in the 1200 as part of a developing program the Templar Knights were charged with after the Crusades. Theie seat and Castle was about 15 km south of us in Lagow. I was born in the Meseritz hospital, the seat of a different county Government because it was closer.
The Ost Wall, (East Defense Line) called Oder-Warthe-Bend, was started by Hitler in 1934 and run roughly along this line of lakes, just a few km east of my village. I didn’t learn about it until my 2010 visit to Germany and my home village. My 1952-56 school friend and I looked at some parts of it and I actually made this album of it:
s74.photobucket.com/user/PI-Sailor/library/Family/Germany-Poland%20Visit%202010/Lagow%20and%20the%20Ostwall/Ostwall%202nd%20Nov%202010?sort=3&page=1



05-This map of my village was drawn, by memory much later, by a survivor of Tempel who was 10 years old in 1945. He is Ulrich Wilhelm, (Uniquely, Wilhelm is the family name). I marked up his map as the pictures in the following album refer back to this drawing. Again I actually made an album about my village, in connection with my friend Steve Foster planning to visit East Germany and Poland, it is this one:
s74.photobucket.com/user/PI-Sailor/library/Family/Family%20in%20Germany/Tempel%20Foster%20project?sort=3&page=1




06-Not a very good picture. It is from 1993, my mother organized a car ride to show our home village and our farm to me, her oldest and only son, (the heir). Left is Ulrich Wilhelm, in summer 1946 he and the remaining Germans had to leave, walking. He ended up in the former East Germany. After reunification Germans east and west were able to get together, organize and remember their homes. Ulrich is a very active participants in this effort and he volunteered to show us. The women in back are the new Polish residents, 4 families shared the home. At that time the house inside and outside didn’t look that well maintained. The young man in the middle is my family friend Hinrich. His parents, his mother in particular took care of my mother and us three children on their farm in West Germany after we fled in 1945 and I grew up there.



07-This railway station saved us. In the night of the 30th Jan. 1945 a train came in to this station from the west and offloaded Volkssturm Soldiers. My father who was also in the Volkssturm, but in a different unit had a 3 day pass. He and others asked the locomotive operator “what’s up” ? He said any one who wanted can get on but the locomotive had to go back to a substantial station west for more water for the locomotive. That was done and all the women and children who wanted plus all the French POWs who were working on the farms here got on and all made it to Berlin. Remember this night the Russians had reached the river Oder north and south of us. Our village Temple was about 70 km east of Frankfurt /Oder. My thoughts, what has happened to all those Volkssturm Soldiers that had come in this night; the front was only a few km further east.



08-This map is good, it shows how the location of my home village relates to some key battle and historical points. This map includes 4 location we visited on this 2013 trip but will be presented later in this thread.



09-My family home 2010, the side to the farm courtyard did not get renovated. The house to the right was one of our workers home, provided to them. During the War French POWs were forced to work on these farms. Before the war there were seasonal workers who came from Hungary.



10-The same view as in the previous image in 1944, the heir is strutting his stuff, yours truly.



11-This picture was damaged but it is a great picture. These coaches were used to go to neighbor villages or look at the fields and woods on holydays. In this picture my father is driving. He also had a motorcycle and he bought a tractor in 1936. At the end of 1944 he prepared the tractor with trailer for our use to flee should the Russians come but the German Army requisitioned it.




13-A visit from the front 1942, the younger brother of my mother, he is holding me and my father is in the picture. Notice the buildings in the picture, the right one is for cattle, horses and hay, the left one is for grain, potatoes etc, more later about them. My uncle was a career soldier since 1938, he died on the 10th of May 1945 (before I believed it was on the 8th of May) during the effort to lead his troops from the east front to the west front in Czechoslovakia.



14-Already had a weight problems then and now again. In between, when the Navy chased me around as a diver, I did ok then as far as weight.



15-That was that large building for the cattle and horses. I was surprised to see it had a steel frame. The Poles, with modern agriculture methods, don’t need all those barns anymore.



16-This was the large building for the grain, potatoes and other food stuff.

[okla]

Hey Karl....Thank you so much for these latest postings, pics, and narrative. It certainly puts a human face and story to what before was only a very familiar and welcome Forum name. This brings to mind, once again, how civilians, regardless of what side of the conflict they found themselves on, suffered. Their plight is, too often, overlooked when historians study the movements of the Armies. I gotta say, you obviously have lived a very eventful life. From escaping the oncoming Red horde on the Eastern Front, diving for the US Navy, and eventually spending your "Golden Years" beating around the backwoods of Bataan and evenings viewing those gorgeous sunsets out on the South China Sea. My thanks to you for sharing these, absolutely fantastic, personal photos of your family and former home town and region. Postscript....I loved the photo of you and your little buddy (piglet). Also I couldn't help but notice what appears to be a basketball goal in the last photograph. It just goes to show that the kids "shoot hoops" in that region as they do elsewhere in the world. There is a photo, somewhere on this forum, of a village scene in the PI and, of course, there is the ever present basketball goal on the playground of the barrio school. Again, my thanks for letting us share this personal portion of your very interesting early years. It has to be a bit comforting to know that the "old home place" still exists, although changed to some degree. It is still "home".

[armyjunk]

A village in Poland, Hi Karl would it be ok if I add a few pics from the German-Polish border area?

[Karl Welteke]

KGB Prison Leistikowstrasse #1, Potsdam

This was our last stop on this 4th day of our trip into the Third Reich History. Visiting this location was a suggestion by one of the State of Brandenburg Nazi Crimes Memorial officials. It was not on our schedule. It was a eye opener for me. Because of the Stalin Communists we lost half of our country and they implemented a communist dictatorship in what became East Germany. Freedom and Justice is the basis of our life. This KGB prison was their instrument of force and injustice. Many who were condemned to death or long imprisonment were in the service of the US Intelligence and some lost their life.

34 images were uploaded into this album about this KGB Prison:
www.flickr.com/photos/44567569@N00/sets/72157634385639501/

Here are some sample images:



01-Leistikowstrasse #1 Memorial Place, the former KGB Prison. This information plaque is located at it’s entrance. This place looks like a prison, it can give you the creeps.



02-GE map of the ex KGB Prison location and I marked some of the other places we visited here in Potsdam and western Berlin.



03-That low concrete building is the entrance and the reception to this KGB Prison Historical Remembrance Place at Leistikowstrasse #1. Notice the I beams which supported a wall around this prison.



04-An information plaque for the punishment cell of this KBB Prison in Potsdam. This is a sample of the many information plaques posted in this KGB Prison Historic Remembrance Place at Leistikowstrasse #1.



05-This is the KGB Prison punishment cell described in the previous image.



06-The typical looks of a passageway with the cell doors in the KGB Prison at Leististrasse #1, Potsdam.



07-Herbert Wuestenberg, in the service of US Intelligence was executed. This is a sample description of individual experiences both in German and English. The prisoners left inscriptions on the walls.



08-This is the story of Elisabeth Reich and Erich Steinig. It says both were rehabilitated, I believe it means after the collapse of the Soviet Union many received a certificate from Russian that they were sentenced because of political reasons, and not for any criminal activity.



09-The KGB Prison at Leistikowstrasse was the Central Remand Prison of the Soviet Counter Intelligence.



10-The first two high Soviet Officers ended up being executed. How would you like to be a high ranking communist officer.



11-A change of procedures and responsibilities in the former East German under the occupation of their big brother.

Notes:

-armyjunk, thanks for posting the Tempel pictures. Armyjunk is one of my friends who visited my home village.

-Wikipedia has a page about this prison:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KGB_Prison,_Potsdam

-This page is from the German Government:
www.bundesstiftung-aufarbeitung.de/potsdam-leistikowstrasse-3479.html

-Bloomberg News has this article and this is the URL for it:
www.businessweek.com/news/2012-04-29/soviet-spy-jail-exposes-stalin-era-torture-injustice-in-potsdam





Soviet Spy Jail Exposes Stalin-Era Torture, Injustice
By Catherine Hickley
In an unassuming former rectory in the eastern German city of Potsdam, Soviet spy catchers once tortured suspects to wring out confessions before executing their victims or dispatching them to Siberian gulags.
The jail on Leistikowstrasse was part of a large Soviet military complex during the Cold War, sealed off from the citizens of Potsdam by barbed wire and guards, and swathed in secrecy and rumors.
At first run by the counter-intelligence agency SMERSH -- an acronym coined by Josef Stalin that means “Death to Spies” in Russian -- it later came under the KGB.
The building, the only Soviet remand prison in East Germany still in its original state, is now open to the public with a new, permanent display exploring the crimes of Stalin’s regime and the suffering of the German and Soviet inmates who languished there, uncertain whether they would live or die.
“It’s a question of ensuring it never happens again,” 83- year-old Friedrich Klausch, a former prisoner, said at the opening this month. “We do have radical forces in this country. It’s up to the rest of us to make sure we can carry on living in peace and freedom.”
The jail is tucked away behind the gracious parkland of Cecilienhof Palace -- the scene of the 1945 Potsdam Conference, where Stalin met with the leaders of Britain, the U.S. and France to carve up Germany after the allied victory in World War II. Days after the leaders left town, the Soviets began imprisoning their first spy suspects.
Dissidents, Deserters
In the postwar years, the inmates were mainly German. After 1955, they were almost exclusively citizens of the Soviet Union -- military deserters and dissidents as well as criminals.
Klausch’s story recalls the many other accounts of Germans imprisoned by Soviet counter-intelligence in the years of political paranoia after World War II. At the age of 18, he was arrested on his way home to Potsdam from a West Berlin cinema in 1948.
Interrogated over six months in the Leistikowstrasse jail, he was sentenced to 25 years for spying. After a spell in the Sachsenhausen labor camp in Berlin, he was deported to a gulag north of the Arctic circle to work in the mines. He didn’t return home for eight years.
The new exhibition includes the letter he was finally permitted to write to his family, seven years after his disappearance.
“It was only in 1955 that I found out there were two German states,” he said.
Fabricated Confessions
Behind the peeling facade of the former jail, visitors can inspect the tiny, dark and damp basement cells where prisoners were confined with no bedding and no ventilation. They were subjected to beatings and interminable interrogations, and deprived of sleep and food.
Women and children were among those tortured; the youngest inmate in the jail was 12.
Waldemar Hoeffding, who was a prisoner between 1945 and 1946, recalled the interrogation tactics and fabricated confessions in his memoirs of the jail.
“Some ‘fatalists’ sign their statement without even reading it,” Hoeffding wrote. “When I asked why they did that, I usually got the same answer, ‘There’s no point; they will do what they want anyway, and I will just lengthen my torture and possibly worsen my fate.”
It is still not known how many were confined in Leistikowstrasse -- so far, the fate of only 60 German and 10 Soviet prisoners has been recorded.
Skipping Lessons
The exhibition features the biographies of 50 former prisoners. Some stories are heartbreaking: Sixteen-year-old schoolboys shot in 1946 on suspicion of insurrection because they skipped Russian lessons; a Ukrainian Red Army soldier jailed in 1970 for trying to escape to West Germany.
When the last Soviet troops left Potsdam in 1994, the building was returned to the church foundation that was its original owner.
An association including victims of Stalinism, protestant church officials and the regional branch of Amnesty International opened the house to the public and staged an exhibition about the jail’s past.
Members of that association complain that the state-funded exhibition that has now opened in its place is too soft on the Soviet Union. In a reminder that this is still living history, protesters at the opening formed a chain and handed out flyers.
“The dark dungeons and blocked and barred windows have mostly disappeared and the light-flooded cells give the impression of a normal prison,” the flier said. “Why is the exhibition trying to play down the crimes of the KGB?”
Guenter Morsch, the director of the Brandenburg Memorial Foundation which now runs the former jail, said he regretted the conflicts with the association.
“We hope that we can set these aside, in talks and in mutual respect, after the opening,” he said in a statement.

To contact the reporter on the story: Catherine Hickley in Berlin at [e-mail].
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff at [e-mail].

[chadhill]

Karl, you have done an absolutely fabulous job with this thread! My hat is tipped to you-