EL-DE house
The EL-DE-Haus is after the initials of its founder L eopold D mimic called originally designed as a residential and commercial building house in Cologne District Old Town North , which as a Gestapo office and prison from 1935 to 1945 the epitome of Nazi was reign of terror in Cologne. Since 1988 it has housed the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne .
Building description and history
The building was commissioned by the Cologne gold and watch wholesaler Leopold Dahmen in 1934/35 according to the plans of the architect Hans Erberich as a residential and commercial building at Appellhofplatz 23-25, corner of Elisenstrasse. Dahmen had the Cologne city coat of arms affixed to the corner of the house and next to it his coat of arms, consisting of two crossed clock hands with the initials L and D and the words EL-DE above it. After construction was stopped in the summer of 1935, the shell of the building was confiscated by the Cologne Gestapo , but not expropriated.
On December 1, 1935, the Gestapo moved into the unfinished house as a tenant and had inmates build ten cells in the basement , which were equipped with iron cots, as well as small guard rooms, niche-like washrooms and toilets and a gallows . The basement was accessible via two steep stairs, which were secured with iron bars. The main entrance was on Appellhofplatz, the side entrance on Elisenstrasse. Two narrow corridors at right angles to each other separated cells 1 to 4 on Elisenstrasse from the remaining cells on Appellhofplatz. Between cells 4 and 5 was a large two-story boiler room, which also narrowed the corridor. The cells on Elisenstrasse had a size of 5.2 to 5.3 m²; the other cells, coming from the Appellhofplatz, varied between 4.6 and 9.3 m². Occasionally the thesis is put forward that an underground corridor connected the Gestapo headquarters with the justice building on the Appellhofplatz opposite . This assumption is not supported by any verifiable sources. In particular, as far as can be seen, there are no publications indicating that traces of the alleged corridor were found in one of these two buildings. Such elaborate secrecy had the intent on terror visibility Nazis may not have needed. There was an air raid shelter in the basement . The cells were originally used to house the detainees during the interrogation period. Later, on the basis of inscriptions on the walls of the prisoners, it turned out that they had to spend several weeks and months there.
Cell 1 to 3 on Elisenstrasse
Cell 7 to 9 at Appellhofplatz
Access to the bunker in the basement
Access to the cellar on Appellhofplatz
Prisoners
Most of the prisoners were prisoners of war and forced labor . The Gestapo also took action against resistance fighters . Among other things, members of the Ehrenfeld group , some of whom belonged to the Edelweiss Pirates , and the organization Komitee Free Germany were targeted. Among those arrested were Joseph Roth , Otto Gerig , Jean Jülich and Gertrud Koch , Peter Schäfer and Hein Bitz . Many prisoners were also brought from the Klingelpütz and other detention centers to the EL-DE house for questioning. The deposed mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, was not imprisoned in the EL-DE house, contrary to popular belief. On the day of his first arrest, on August 23, 1944, he was taken directly to the Cologne exhibition center, which had been converted into a prison camp. In the EL-DE house, however, his wife Gussi was for the night of 24/25. Imprisoned September 1944.
Interrogate
The interrogations initially took place on the level of the cell block. Since the house was in the city center, many passers-by heard the screams of the tortured. The brutal interrogations were later placed in the basement. The inmates were beaten with knuckles , black clubs and rubber truncheons as well as with kicks and fist blows in order to obtain the desired statements.
Executions
The Gestapo carried out many mass executions that were carried out without convictions. Permission was given to the Cologne Gestapo by the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin . Most of the executions took place on the gallows . Not far from the EL-DE house was a gallows frame on which seven people could be hung at the same time . The bodies were buried in a Gestapo field provided for this purpose in the Westfriedhof in Bocklemünd . For the transport to the cemetery, municipal garbage trucks were used. Today, 788 dead are remembered as victims of the Gestapo in the cemetery. Many were also buried by their relatives in their hometowns. The last execution at the EL-DE house took place on March 2, 1945, shortly before the American troops marched in.
Escape from the El De House
The Russian slave laborer Askold Kurow managed to escape from the El-De-Haus in mid-February 1945. When he was used to transport files in the basement, the Gestapo officer on watch was called one floor higher to the first basement, where the cells were located, when the phone rang. Kurow entered the boiler room of the house through an unlocked door and used one of the cellar windows, which were not barred for the purpose of delivering coal in this area, to escape. He escaped unnoticed from a window next to the main entrance door of the Gestapo headquarters onto the sidewalk and sat down in Bergische. Kurow survived the war and finally returned to his homeland.
Wall inscriptions
Out of the uncertainty that they would never see their relatives again and that they would gain their freedom, many prisoners wrote messages or simply drew figures, landscapes, animals and other things on the wall. Since the walls were painted over several times, the innumerable inscriptions can still be seen around 1800, dating from the period between the end of 1943 and 1945. Further inscriptions can only be guessed at. About 600 inscriptions in Cyrillic are from Russians and Ukrainians, and another 300 are written in French, Dutch, Polish, English and Spanish. After the war, some partitions between the cells were removed. So in cells 2 and 3 as well as in cells 5 and 6. As a result, some inscriptions were lost.
Some examples are given here:
The Russian prisoner of war Askold Kurow (managed to escape and survived) from cell 1:
“Two friends from the Messe camp have been sitting here with the Gestapo since December 24th, 1944, Askold Kurow and Gaidai Wladimir, it is now February 3rd, 1945. 40 people were hanged. We've been sitting for 43 days, the interrogation is coming to an end, now it's our turn with the gallows. I ask those who know us to tell our comrades that we too perished in these torture chambers. "
In cell 1 there is also the lettering by Hans Weinsheime from 1944:
"If nobody thinks of you, your mother thinks of you"
A French prisoner wrote in cell 6:
"The German customs are especially revealed in cell 6, where they manage to squeeze up to thirty-three people into it at once."
Probably from an edelweiss pirate :
"Rio de Schanero, aheu kapalero, edelweiss pirates are loyal"
Cell 1
Cell 9
Cell 10
Door to cell 5
Statements from prisoners and contemporary witnesses
After the war, some former prisoners and contemporary witnesses could be asked about the prison and living conditions in the basement of the EL-DE house.
Stefania Balcerzak:
“Nata Tulasiewics was interrogated three times in the basement. When Nata went downstairs, we could hear her screaming. She returned bleeding. "
Nata Tulasiewics (Beata Natalia Tulasiewicz) was arrested in April 1944 and spent several weeks in the EL-DE house. She was then taken to the Ravensbrück concentration camp , where she was murdered on March 31, 1945. In 1999 she was beatified by Pope John Paul II .
Wilhelmine Hömens, who testified before a British investigative court in 1947:
“On March 1, 1945, a Stapo detachment brought 70 to 80 girls and about 30 men tied to one another from the Klingelpütz on foot over the castle wall to the Stapo grounds. They were Germans and the majority were so-called Eastern workers. These people were all hung up on the Stapo site because I did not see the return transport, but found that three trucks with corpses had been brought to the cemetery around 5 p.m. "
After the war
The bombing raids of July 8, 1941 caused severe damage in Langgasse and Appellhofplatz up to No. 21; the house was largely spared from bombs during the war. After the war it was used by the municipal authorities. From 1947 to 1949 the house was rebuilt and the neighboring houses on Appellhofplatz and Elisenstraße were integrated into the house. In 1979 calls were made to turn the building into a documentation center. In the same year, the Cologne City Council decided to set up a documentation center.
In order to put the basement in the public eye, the photographer Gernot Huber and the teacher Kurt Holl let themselves be locked in the basement overnight without being noticed. They photographed and documented the wall inscriptions and the cell wing, which was used by the offices in the building as a filing and storage room. Due to the loud echo in the public, another decision by the city led the city curator Hiltrud Kier to have the cellar and the inscriptions restored and then the cellar was set up as a memorial on December 4, 1981.
The EL-DE house today
→ Main article NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne
The cells have been preserved from the original design of the cell wing. The iron bars in front of the two stairs of the cellar, the numbers of the cells and also the door locks are still intact. In addition, many wall inscriptions have been preserved, which can be seen in cells 1 to 4 on Elisenstrasse. On the walls and on the floor you can still see the notches in the beds, which were removed a few months before the end of the war in order to create more space in the cells, which were built for no more than two to three prisoners, but which were heavily overcrowded during this time were.
Starting from the memorial in the basement, the house has been primarily a documentation and research center since September 19, 1988 , which contains a museum and a library as a place of learning and education and whose sponsoring association is named after the EL-DE house (Verein EL-DE-Haus eV). The permanent exhibition Cologne under National Socialism can be viewed in the museum. The library is primarily intended to appeal to schoolchildren and young people, and student projects are also supported. Another task of the center is to collect eyewitness reports, photos and documents from the National Socialist era. An experienced history database is available on the Internet.
The documentation center was expanded by renting additional rooms in the course of 2012. The EL-DE-Haus, which in addition to the documentation center also houses the premises of the Cologne city administration, which according to a council decision of 2017 will also be available to the NS-Doc from 2019, is owned by the descendants of Leopold Dahmens.
literature
- Manfred Huiskes: The wall inscriptions of the Cologne Gestapo prison in the EL-DE house 1943–1945. Messages from the Cologne City Archives, Volume 70; Böhlau, Cologne / Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-412-11182-1 .
- Werner Jung (Ed.): Walls that talk. The wall inscriptions in the Cologne Gestapo prison in the EL-DE house. Emons Verlag , Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-95451-239-3 .
- Nazi Documentation Center of the City of Cologne (ed.): Cologne under National Socialism: A short guide through the EL-DE house. Emons, Cologne 2001, ISBN 3-89705-209-1 .
- Fritz Theilen : Edelweiss pirates. Cologne Library, 11; Emons, Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-89705-272-5 .
Web links
- Website of the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne in the EL-DE house
- museenkoeln.de | NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne
- Web portal Experienced history
References and comments
- ^ Roth family archive: Memories of Wilhelm Roth (1932–1995) of the torture of his father Joseph Roth in the EL-DE house after his arrest in 1944.
- ↑ NS Documentation Center Cologne - Individual Fates. Retrieved October 10, 2017 .
- ↑ http://www.museenkoeln.de/ns-dok/default.asp?s=308&tid=206&kontrast=&schrift= ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 9, 2012.
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from June 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved May 5, 2012.
- ^ The Council of the City of Cologne (ed.): Minutes of the 30th meeting of the Council in the 2014/2020 electoral period . July 2017, p. 41 ( stadt-koeln.de [accessed on June 26, 2019]).
Coordinates: 50 ° 56 '26.2 " N , 6 ° 57' 0.3" E