The house prison in the EL-DE House

The house prison comprised ten cells, lavatories and sanitation as well as rooms for the Gestapo guards. Following severe damage in an air raid in 1943, the house had to be evacuated while structural alterations and repair work were carried out. In Cell 7, the rear of a room reserved for ‘intense interrogations’, an only 2.6 m2 square yard small dark cell with a narrow stone bench was installed. No other structural changes were made to the building until the end of the Gestapo’s activities in early March 1945. The house prison more or less remains the same today. The only changes which have been made are that the separating walls between cells 2 and 3, as well as between cells 5 and 6 were torn down after the war. The respective area is marked with a lighter colour. For quite some time after the war, the former cells 5 and 6 were used as coal cellars. There, the original surface of the wall was destroyed almost entirely, especially as the walls were later painted over with emulsion. Only on the right wall of cell 6 (seen from the entrance), a few individual inscriptions can be seen in the top corner. This room is therefore used for a small exhibition. The iron grates along the Appellhofplatz and Elisenstraße staircases are original; though the stair - case leading to the Elisenstraße entrance, had to be rebuilt in part. Also the iron gate in the aisle between cell 1 and the Gestapo service tract (guard rooms) is original. In the last decades, however, pipes for natural gas and phone lines were installed on the surface of the walls.

The prison wing can be reached via two narrow staircases that were secured with iron bars. One of the staircases leads from the main entrance on Appellhofplatz to the house prison. This was the path taken by most of the prisoners and today it is the entrance to the memorial. The second staircase leads from the side entrance on Elisenstraße to the place where supplies were received into the prison. The original numbers can still be seen on the steel sheets covering the doors of the ten cells. The original locks are still in working condition. The cells are arranged along two narrow, rectangular aisles. Four cells (1 to 4) face Elisenstraße, six cells (5 to 10) face Appellhofplatz. This division of the prison is further emphasised by the fact that cells 4 and 5 are separated by a boiler room that was installed across two storeys including the deep cellar, further constricting the already narrow aisle. The prison is located in the basement, with daylight only coming in through small windows. The windows in the cells are secured with thick iron bars, wired glass and iron shutters. As the EL-DE House is located in the city centre, contemporary witnesses confirm that the sounds and screams of the prisoners could also be heard from outside.

At a length of 3.7 to 4.2 and a width of 1.1 to 2.3 metres, the size of the cells varied from 4.6 m2 (cells 8 and 9) to 9.0 m2 (cell 6) and 9.3 m2 (cell 7), respectively. At 5.3 to 5.3 m2, cells 1 to 4 giving on Elisenstraße are almost similar in size. The cells were designed to hold one, maybe two persons. During the last two years of the war however, they were severely overcrowded. In November 1944, even the Gestapo reported that eight to ten times more prisoners than originally planned were being held in the cells, i.e. eight to twenty persons in each cell. According to a French inscription, up to 33 prisoners were detained in cell 6 at a time [see further down, the chapter on prison and living conditions]. You can still clearly see the indentations where pallets had been fixed to the walls and the floor, until they were probably removed in the last months of the war in order to make more room.

Although it is often claimed that cells 1 to 4 constituted the female section, there were in fact no separate female and male sections. The surviving inscriptions show that both men and women were detained in all parts of the prison, albeit not together in the same cells. Most of the inscriptions were made by women. The presumption that cells 1 to 4 constituted the women’s section is attributable to the fact that the majority of surviving inscriptions in these cells were written by women.

Between cells 6 and 7, diagonally opposite of the stairs there is a small room, its ceiling getting lower towards the rear due to its location underneath the staircase leading to the entrance of the EL-DE House. In 1943, the guard room was installed, and a wall was taken down so that they could look out over the aisle. Before, the guard room had been located opposite, in the open space next to the stairs; a trough with six water taps ran along the left wall and a toilet was located in the right corner. In 1943, the guard room had to be moved to combat the rising threat of typhoid caused by overcrowding. The toilet was transferred to the left corner and the wash trough was moved forward in order to accommodate a gasfired disinfection device. Moreover, three showers were installed about 1.5 metres behind the corner of the aisle, as well as another two toilets next to the open space. Today, only a few pipes remain from these installations. Next to the lavatory, was the pump room where the Gestapo operated an electronic and a manual pump as well as an emergency generator, which provided private water and power supply independent of the public grid. Only after the end of the war the house was connected to the municipal water supply, the main water pipe was laid through cell 10. Furthermore, a ventilation system was installed in 1943; the air ducts can still be seen at the top of the cells.

In the rear part of the prison section starting behind the iron gate after cell 1 were the common rooms for the Gestapo officers and probably also a doctor’s room some prisoners mention, as well as storage space for luggage, a toilet and one surviving tap located on the left, underneath the stairwell. From this part of the prison, one could reach the inner courtyard where the executions were performed.

The lower basement of the EL-DE House had already been equipped with a house bunker (air raid shelter) during construction. The steel doors and ventilation shafts of the bunker remain intact to this day. As a rule, few or no prisoners were taken to the bunker. The inmates left behind in the prison cells had to suffer additional agony during air raids. In the back of the house bunker, a door led to a freight lift that was used to transport dustbins after 1945. Today, the shaft is closed off with a wall. The Gestapo bunker underwent some structural change after 1945 when a lift was added to one side. In 1944, the Gestapo commissioned the construction of a Hochbunker (high rise bunker) neighbouring the EL-DE House and two other buildings on Elisenstraße. It housed one part of the Gestapo headquarters, whereas the other half was accessible to the public. The Hochbunker survived the war undamaged and was only demolished in 1959.

In the lower basement, prisoners were tortured. The screams of the tortured could not be overheard easily from the prison or the Gestapo offices. Many surviving prisoners report hearing the victims scream. Prison cells are said to have been installed there. There was also said to be a block of wood which prisoners were tied to. According to a report in the ‘Kölnischer Kurier’ (a newspaper) on 23 October 1945, at the time there were still remainders of iron chains on the walls and traces of smaller cells, so small that a person could hardly stand up in them. The alleged secret underground connection to the courthouse across the street on Appellhofplatz did not exist. Only one inscription (by Hans Weinsheimer) remains in the lower basement on the back of an iron girder in the middle section of the lower basement and can be seen through a small gap in the wall today.

The house prison of the Cologne Gestapo is one of the best preserved prisons from the National Socialist era in Germany. The prisoners’ inscriptions are a unique document and lend the memorial place a special importance. After extensive restoration work, about 1,800 individual inscriptions or drawings were counted, however, at a closer look a large amount of smaller engravings can be made out. The inscriptions date back to the period between the end of 1943 and 30 June 1945. On 7 March 1945, one day after the liberation, an American soldier made an inscription in cell 2. On 30 June 1945, a Cyrillic inscription was edged into the wall of cell 1: ‘stayed alive’. The last coat of paint must have been added in the end of 1943 subsequent to heavy bombing raids. Older inscriptions were painted over. In places, they show through the top layer of paint or become visible where paint has peeled off. Unfortunately, attempts to visualise the lower layers of paints using infrared technology failed.

Prisoners’ inscriptions

The inscriptions and drawings were made with pencil, pieces of chalk or coal or scratched into the walls with iron nails, screws or even fingernails; lipstick was also used. More than 600 inscriptions – more than a third – were written by Russians and Ukrainians in Cyrillic letters, another 230 in other foreign languages, especially French, Polish and Dutch. Hence, the inscriptions reflect the final period of World War II, a time when a large number of forced labourers and prisoners of war were held in Cologne; Jews had already been deported and the political resistance present during the first years of the National Socialist Party rule had long since been broken. The majority of surviving inscriptions can be found in cells 1 to 4 as the walls in these rooms were whitewashed after 1945 and the inscriptions were well-preserved by the lime paint. In the former coal cellar (cells 5 and 6), the walls were painted over with white emulsion paint at the beginning of 1979, destroying the inscriptions in the process. In other cells, inscriptions were destroyed by humidity. This is true for cell 10 in particular, where new water supply pipes were installed in 1945, causing large quantities of paint to flake off the concrete wall.

Further Gestapo detention facilities

Apart from their house prison in the EL-DE House, the Gestapo had other detention facilities. Especially during the final years of the war, the amount of Gestapo prisoners increased significantly.

Klingelpütz: As of 1933, the Gestapo detained thousands of prisoners in the central Cologne prison, the Klingelpütz. A smaller part of the prison served as a police prison and was used regularly by the Gestapo officers. By autumn 1944, the Gestapo seized the entire wing III of the building, which was strictly separated from the other prison buildings. At times, 600 to 700 persons were detained there. The Gestapo prisoners were taken to the EL-DE House for interrogation.

Brauweiler: The Provinzial labour camp in Brauweiler near Cologne had already been used as an auxiliary prison by the Gestapo from March 1933 until March 1943 (‘Brauweiler Concentration Camp’). From the beginning of the war, the Cologne Gestapo started to use the labour camp buildings more and more often, e.g. for the detention of participants in the Spanish Civil War and Belgian resistance fighters in 1941/42 and then, as of January 1942, the camp was constantly used as an auxiliary Gestapo prison. From the spring of 1944 on, several special task forces were housed there, which, among other activities, pursued members of the Bündische Jugend (a free youth movement) and the Edelweiss Pirates as well as a resistance group of Polish officers and the National Committee for a Free Germany.

Cologne Trade Fair Camp: In September 1942, the criminal investigation department started to build barracks in the area of the ‘Tanzbrunnen’ (a well known cultural venue). This ‘auxiliary police prison’ served as a transit camp also for Gestapo prisoners who were interrogated and released again, brought to court or deported to concentration camps. From spring 1943 on, mainly male and female foreigners were detained at the camp as ‘work education detainees’ for limited periods of time and had to perform forced labour. For the same purposes, the Cologne Gestapo used a satellite camp of Buchenwald Concentration Camp that, between September 1942 and May 1944, was located close to the trade fair tower. Up to 450 Gestapo prisoners (April 1944) were held under police and SS supervision in this area of the camp. Both camps became known under the term ‘Messelager’ (Trade Fair Camp). When the Trade Fair Camp was destroyed during an air raid in October 1944, the prisoners were transferred to Müngersdorf.

Auxiliary prisons on company premises: Further auxiliary state police prisons as well as ‘work education camps’ were run by the Gestapo in cooperation with companies on their respective corporate premises, such as the fuel plant in Cologne-Wesseling, ‘Westwaggon’ in Cologne-Deutz and ‘Glanzstoff’ in Cologne Mülheim.

‘Work education camp’ Mülheim- Ruhr airport: This ‘work education camp’ existed between June 1941 and March 1945. Prisoners were transferred there from other Rhineland- Westphalian state police departments. The camp was supervised by the Cologne State Police Department and was managed by two Cologne Gestapo officers.

‘Work education camp’ Hunswinkel: The camp located in the Sauerland (region in West Germany) existed between August 1940 and April 1945 and was used by Gestapo departments from the Rhineland and Westphalia. It was supervised by the Düsseldorf State Police Headquarters and, initially, the Dortmund Gestapo was in charge of managing the camp. On 3 March 1945, the Cologne Gestapo took over command after the Dortmund offices were transferred to Hönnetal. From 1 March 1945 on, first the Gestapo prisoners from the Müngersdorf camp and then also the prisoners from the EL-DE House and the Klingelpütz were transferred to Hunswinkel on foot, with the marches taking several days. During the last weeks of the war, more than 600 prisoners of the Cologne Gestapo were held there.

Müngersdorf camp: In 1941, barracks were installed in the former Fort V, close to the city forest. Here, Jewish women, men and children from Cologne and the city’s surroundings were detained until the Gestapo transferred them to the ghettos and extermination camps in occupied Eastern Europe. The Trade Fair Camp had to be evacuated following a direct hit during an air raid on 14 October 1944; by this time the Jewish population had already been displaced and thus a ‘work education camp’ was established in Müngersdorf.

Prisons in Rheinbach and Siegburg: Due to mass arrests, the Gestapo was experiencing a ‘shortage of prison space’ and consequently started to use a wing of the Rheinbach prison for about 100 prisoners in autumn 1944. Towards the end of the war, numerous prisoners from Brauweiler were transferred to the Siegburg prison.

Increasing terror – executions on the EL-DE House premises

The beginning of the war in 1939 led the way to unprecedented terror. During the years of the war, the Gestapo’s work was characterised by intensification and radicalisation. The forced labourers and the prisoners of war were subject to particularly brutal treatment. The number of arrests increased in the course of the war. In August 1943, the Gestapo arrested 2,090 persons. Furthermore, special task forces were established that were notorious for their brutality. For example, there was the ‘Kommando Bethke’ unit, run by inspector Kurt Bethke, which pursued members of the resistance movement of Polish officers (officer cadets) from April 1944 on, or the ‘Kommando Kütter’, run by inspector Ferdinand Kütter, which cracked down on so-called ‘gang activities’ in Cologne from the autumn of 1944, i.e. also on Edelweiss Pirates and the National Committee for a Free Germany resistance group. Both units had their headquarters in Brauweiler. During the last months of the war, another special force was established in the courthouse on Appellhofplatz, run by inspector Best.

The final phase of the war was characterised by the State Police’s increasing brutality. In the period between 1943 and the middle of 1944, the terror started to reach its climax. On 4 November 1944, the Main Security Office authorised the local state police departments to perform executions of ‘non-German persons’ without prior clearance by the Berlin head office, which had been a requirement until then. Consequently, the regional State Police departments’ activities became even more arbitrary. The first executions were already performed on the premises of the EL-DE House in the end of October 1944. The executions were mostly carried out by hanging, less often by shooting. A transportable gallows had been erected, where seven people could be hanged simultaneously. For the execu tions, the scaffold with the gallows was fetched from the ground floor rooms next to the kitchen of the EL-DE House and was assembled in the inner court. The exact location of the gallows is not known. It was most likely not set up in today’s inner court, but rather along the back of the high rise bunker on the neighbouring bomb site on Elisenstraße. The gallows was probably hidden behind a wall. The executions could, however, be watched from the upper floors of the EL-DE House and the few houses in Schwalbengasse that remained standing. The bodies were carted off to the Westfriedhof with lorries of the municipal rubbish disposal, where the Gestapo had their own section, the ‘Gestapo field’. To this day, 792 dead remain buried there, even though numerous foreign victims were returned to their home countries after the war. The majority of the victims buried there were not executed but died in air raids, from hunger or epidemics.

Lists of the persons to be executed were drawn up, probably based on nominations provided by the individual departments of the Cologne Gestapo. An execution unit of the department’s commander in charge organised the executions. The prisoners to be executed were taken to the EL-DE House from the other detention centres, camps and especially from the Klingelpütz. As of October 1944, executions were performed, sometimes several times a week with up to over a hundred people being murdered on one single day. Even on 1 March 1945, four or five high security transport trucks brought 105 prisoners to the EL-DE House to be hanged. The last execution of at least ten people was carried out on 2 March 1945 – four days before American troops reached the city – among them a fifteen-year old Cologne youth, a Russian prisoner of war and a Pole. After the last execution, the corpses could not be removed anymore and, together with the gallows, they were found on the premises of the EL-DE House in October 1945. On 3 March 1945, the Polish forced labourer Josef Biczszak was murdered after working for the Gestapo as an errand boy for four years. Clearly he had accumulated too much knowledge regarding the goings on there to be spared.

It is impossible to determine the precise number of people who were executed by the Gestapo. However, it has to be assumed that several hundred people were executed in the inner court of the EL-DE House. Based on findings of French and British investigation officers, they were mainly foreigners (forced labourers and prisoners of war). However, they were not the only victims of the Cologne Gestapo: There is no knowing how many died during arrests or as the consequence of torture. Occasionally, the Gestapo also murdered people in the Klingelpütz prison, in Brauweiler and the work education camps. As early as in 1940/41, a public execution of a Pole was performed in Ossendorf, in 1942/43, several executions took place in the Christian Breuer gravel pit on Butzweiler Weg in Cologne-Ossendorf and in October and November 1944, public executions followed in Cologne- Ehrenfeld, of forced labourers and of Germans youths who were considered members of the Edelweiss Pirates.

One day before the Americans arrived on 6 March 1945, the last Gestapo officers fled across the Rhine. This, how - ever, did not put an end to their arbitrariness and violence. The marches the Cologne Gestapo prisoners endured, walking from the individual camps and detention facilities, were particularly brutal and cost the lives of many an exhausted prisoner. Even at the end of March 1945, a Cologne Gestapo officer named Brodesser ordered the killing of at least 16 Ukrainian women, 8 Ukrainian men and one Russian citizen in the Hunswinkel ‘work education camp’.

All the victims of the Cologne Gestapo listed below were murdered here. Furthermore, a local Gestapo branch was responsible for the deportation and killing of thousands of Cologne Jews and hundreds of resistance fighters and also took part in the deportation and killing of over 1,500 Sinti and Roma, numerous homosexuals and so-called antisocial elements.