KGB Prison, Potsdam

The prison in Leistikowstraße 1 in Potsdam was a detention center of the Soviet SMERSH counterintelligence.

Building

The building was originally built in 1916-18 by the Evangelical Church Aid Society EKH. After the Potsdam Conference in August 1945 were about 100 houses of the " Nauen suburb ", which is adjacent to the New Garden, sealed off and renamed " military town No.7". In the settlement there was the command headquarters of the KGB for Germany, which was housed in the former boarding the Empress Auguste Victoria. The adjacent building of the Women's Aid ( Leistikowstraße 1, previously Mirbachstrasse road 1) was used as a detention center counterintelligence.

History

By 1955 there were also German interned who were suspected to be active as a werewolf or to carry out espionage services for the Allied occupation forces in the western sectors of Berlin. Soviet soldiers whose collaboration, desertion or close contact population was accused were imprisoned until the mid-1980s there. Many inmates were sentenced after violent interrogations in death or long prison terms and sent to the labor camp, Vorkuta or other labor camps of the Soviet gulags.

The building was used from the late 1980s as a warehouse. With the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Germany was in 1994 returned to the Evangelical Church Aid Society. After the restoration of 2007/2008 was opened on 29 March 2009, the memorial which is now once again open to visitors. Since 2009 a permanent exhibition on the history of pre-trial detention prison has been developed, which can be visited since April 2012. The state of Brandenburg, the Federal Republic of Germany and private donors have provided 2.2 million euros available for the establishment of the memorial.