EL-DE Haus

EL-DE Haus NS-Dokumentationszentrum - darkometer rating : 7 - A former Gestapo HQ and prison in Cologne , west Germany , and now also home to the city's documentation centre about the Nazi era. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: The building gets its odd name from the initials (pronounced the German way) of the businessman Leopold Dahmen who planned the building. Initially it was meant to be a mixed-use business and residential building, but from 1935, before construction was even completed, Dahmen rented it out to the Gestapo , who occupied the house until March 1945. Instead of the originally planned underground garages, the Gestapo had ten prison cells set up in the basement, together with guardrooms, basic bathroom facilities and a gallows. The upper floors were used as the Gestapo's Cologne HQ. The basement was also routinely used to extract confessions through torture from those arrested. In the beginning, it was mostly political prisoners who were taken here – later, during WWII , also POW s from various countries, in particular the Soviet Union , Poland , France and the Netherlands . Cologne's former mayor, who was deposed by the Nazis in 1933, also briefly passed through the EL-DE Haus prison. The cells, originally designed to hold no more than 4 to 6 inmates each, were later totally crammed with up to three dozen prisoners. Also, the cells were initially only intended to be used in between interrogations, but later some prisoners had to spend weeks on end locked up down here. Needless to say the conditions were more than inhumane.