Permanent exhibition
The permanent exhibition in the NS-Documentation Centre provides comprehensive insights into the history of Cologne during the National Socialist era. Display boards in the former Gestapo prison provide information about the conditions in the prison and the preserved wall inscriptions left by the prisoners. Part of the exhibition tour includes the inner courtyard, where more than 400 people were executed in 1944/45.
About the exhibition
By using historical photographs, newspaper articles, letters, documents and audio and video stations, the exhibition spanning over two floors covers a variety of topics, i.e. the establishment of the dictatorship, changes in the urban society and how the National Socialist terror was structured. The various groups of persecuted people are also considered based on numerous known individual fates. Finally, it also covers the destruction of the city during the Second World War.
The explanatory texts in the permanent exhibition and most of the sources on display are in German. You can hire audio guides in Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew, Polish, Russian or Spanish from the ticket counter. The short guide through the EL-DE-House can also be purchased there in German or English.
The permanent exhibition opened in 1997 and was updated in 2009/10. We are currently working on a fundamentally new concept that will present the history of the Gestapo in the EL-DE building as well as Cologne's society under National Socialism.
