Spandau Prison Grounds (site) (Berlin)

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The prison was built in 1876. It initially served as a military detention center. From 1919 it was also used for civilian inmates. It held up to 600 inmates at that time.

In the aftermath of the Reichstag Fire of 1933, opponents of Hitler and journalists such as Egon Kisch and Carl von Ossietzky were held there in so-called protective custody. Spandau Prison became a sort of predecessor of the Nazi concentration camps. While it was formally operated by the Prussian Ministry of Justice, the Gestapo tortured and abused its inmates, as Egon Erwin Kisch recalls in his memories of Spandau Prison. By the end of 1933 the first Nazi concentration camps had been erected (at Dachau, Osthofen, Oranienburg, Sonnenburg, Lichtenburg and the marshland camps around Esterwegen), all remaining prisoners who had been held in so-called protective custody in state prisons were transferred to these concentration camps.

After World War II it was operated by the Four-Power Authorities to house the Nazi war criminals sentenced to imprisonment at the Nuremberg Trials.



Prison building of red brick, was equipped with several kinds of protection and alarm systems:

* a wall height of 5 m;
* a wall height of 10 m;
* a wall height of 3 m Electrofences;
* fence with barbed wire.

132 prison cells designed for 600 people.
Length of the chamber was about 3 m, width - 2,7 m height - 4 pm

Protection - a hundred soldiers of the USSR, Britain, France and the USA. Nine guard towers, where the service carrying armed gunmen.