ACAHKT Memorial Place, Ploetzensee, Berlin, Germany

Gedenkstätte Plötzensee

imageBROKER/Siegfried Grassegger/Alamy

Gedenkstätte Plötzensee

Berlin


Plötzensee was one of Berlin’s most notorious prisons during the Third Reich. Some 3000 people were executed here, most of them members of the Nazi resistance. The room where the beheadings and hangings took place is now a hauntingly simple memorial: only a steel bar with eight hooks pierces its emptiness. Next door, an exhibit introduces some of the victims and outlines Nazi Germany’s judicial and penal system.

You’ll learn that the families of the condemned had to pay for the cost of the execution, while executioners received a bonus for each bloody deed. In 1944 many of the conspirators of the failed assassination attempt on Hitler led by Colonel Stauffenberg on 20 July of that year – and their (mostly uninvolved) relatives and friends – were hanged here, a process the Führer allegedly had captured on film.

To get here take bus 123 from Beusselstrasse S-Bahn station.


Lonely Planet's must-see attractions

Nearby Berlin attractions

1. Preussische Spirituosen Manufaktur

0.89 MILES

This historic factory has made premium spirits and liqueurs since 1874 and even counted German Kaiser Wilhelm I among its customers. All is produced by…

2. Schloss Charlottenburg - Belvedere

1.5 MILES

The late-rococo Belvedere palace, with its distinctive cupola, makes an elegant setting for the world's largest collection of porcelain masterpieces by…

3. Schloss Charlottenburg - Neuer Pavillon

1.7 MILES

Returning from a trip to Italy, Friedrich Wilhelm III (r 1797–1848) commissioned Karl Friedrich Schinkel to design this petite summer refuge modelled on a…

4. Schlossgarten Charlottenburg

1.73 MILES

The expansive park behind Schloss Charlottenburg is part formal French, part unruly English and all picturesque playground. Hidden among the shady paths,…

5. Siedlung Schillerpark

1.73 MILES

The Siedlung Schillerpark is the oldest of Berlin’s five sprawling, modernist, 1920s housing estates that were inscribed on Unesco’s list of World…

6. Schloss Charlottenburg - Neuer Flügel

1.75 MILES

The palace’s most beautiful rooms are the flamboyant private chambers of Frederick the Great, designed in 1746 by the period's star architect Georg…

7. Schloss Charlottenburg - Mausoleum

1.75 MILES

In the palace garden, west of the carp pond, the temple-like Mausoleum (1810) was conceived as the final resting place of Queen Luise, and twice expanded…

8. Akademie der Künste

1.78 MILES

The Academy of Arts has a pedigree going back to 1696 but its cultural programming is solidly rooted in the here and now. It covers all forms of artistic…