EL-DE Haus, officially the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne, located in

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...

, is the former headquarters of the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...

and now a museum documenting the

Third Reich Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. The building was at first the business premises of jeweller Leopold Dahmen, and the building takes its name from his initials. In 1934, the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in N ...

rented the building from him and turned it into the headquarters of the secret police, the Gestapo. Surprisingly, the building survived the Allied bombing of Cologne during World War II, while 90% of the city was destroyed. After the bombings, the basements of the building, which had been used as prison cells and

torture Torture is the deliberate infliction of severe pain or suffering on a person for reasons such as punishment, extracting a confession, interrogational torture, interrogation for information, or intimidating third parties. definitions of tortur ...

rooms for forced labourers and political enemies, were used to store wartime files and paperwork. Inscriptions made on the walls of the prison cells by inmates can still be viewed today. The building was the site of many executions, as well as deaths due to overcrowding and poor hygienic conditions. In 2006, the Documentation Centre on National Socialism was awarded the Best in Heritage award, which is given to select museums. The only other German museum to have won the prize is the Buddenbrook Museum in

Lübeck Lübeck (; Low German also ), officially the Hanseatic City of Lübeck (german: Hansestadt Lübeck), is a city in Northern Germany. With around 217,000 inhabitants, Lübeck is the second-largest city on the German Baltic coast and in the state ...

EL-DE Haus Gallery

Cologne-EL-DE-House-UpperFloorMuseum.JPG, Museum in upper floor Cologne-EL-DE-House-CellBlock-1.JPG, Basement Cell Block Zelle 1 EL-DE-Haus.jpg, Cell 1 in basement Cologne-EL-DE-House-CellGraffiti.JPG, Original Graffiti in basement cell

References

External links

Official website
*Martens, Josefa

from Deutsche Welle. Retrieved 12 March 2006. Museums in Cologne Buildings and structures in Cologne World War II museums in Germany Gestapo {{NorthRhineWestphalia-struct-stub