Gedenkstätte Plötzensee

Description

In Charlottenburg‑Nord the Plötzensee Memorial commemorates the victims of Nazi justice in the former Berlin‑Plötzensee penal institution; the memorial stands on the site of the former execution facility at the edge of the present-day prison and was opened by the state of Berlin in 1952.

The prison was built between 1868 and 1879 on land belonging at the time to the royal forest administration and, with the formation of Greater Berlin in 1920, was assigned to the district of Charlottenburg.

During the Nazi period the institution served not only for the enforcement of custodial sentences but, together with the Brandenburg‑Görden penal institution, as a central execution site for Execution District IV. Well over 2,800 death sentences were carried out here; among the executed were numerous members of resistance groups, participants in the 20 July 1944 plot and members of the so‑called “Red Orchestra.” Almost half of those executed came from abroad; more than 300 women were transferred from the women’s prison on Barnimstraße, and about 100 conscientious objectors from among Jehovah’s Witnesses were among the victims.

Initially executions with an axe took place in the yard. Following a 1936 decree the guillotine was introduced throughout the Reich; it was installed in the prison in 1937. The law of March 1933 had also permitted hanging again, which from December 1942 was once more applied systematically. On 15 December 1942 an iron rail with hooks was installed in the execution facility, enabling several executions to be carried out simultaneously. The guillotine was probably damaged by an air raid on the night of 4 September 1943 and was temporarily put out of operation.

After severe bomb damage four convicts escaped; a Reich authority then ordered the immediate execution of many death sentences. In the nights from 7 to 12 September 1943, the so‑called Plötzensee blood nights, over 250 inmates of various origins were hanged; among them were people whose executions had been ordered in error. Reports by the Protestant prison chaplain document these events. The state secretary responsible was convicted after the war in a jurists’ trial and was later released early.

In 1951 part of the execution shed was dismantled; in its place there is now a rubble‑stone wall. The execution beam, today fitted with five meat hooks, has been preserved; the floor beneath the beam slopes toward the centre of the room and contains a drain.

Among those executed at Plötzensee were numerous well‑known resistance fighters and opponents of the Nazi regime, such as Marianne Baum, Eugen Bolz, Cato Bontjes van Beek, Alfred Delp, Helmuth Hübener, Karlrobert Kreiten, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, as well as several participants in the 20 July 1944 assassination attempt.

As sacred places of remembrance, north of the Paul‑Hertz housing estate the Roman Catholic church Maria Regina Martyrum (Heckerdamm 230) with a Carmelite convent and the Evangelische Gemeindezentrum Plötzensee (Heckerdamm 226) were built; the parish centre houses the Plötzensee Totentanz by Alfred Hrdlicka. The Sühne‑Christi‑Kirche in Toeplerstraße 1 with its memorial wall complements the ensemble. Together with the memorial, these sites form stations of the Pfad der Erinnerung, realised in 2018.