
Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial
Former political prison with underground cells and tours often led by ex-inmates.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen Memorial follows what happened to someone pulled off a Berlin street and driven, disoriented, in a hidden compartment of a Stasi delivery van to East Germany's central political prison, which operated from 1951 until the Stasi fell in 1989. It traces the roughly eleven thousand people who passed through these gates, from the windowless submarine cells dug into the cellar by the Soviets to the later Stasi wing, where isolation and stolen sleep did the work violence once did. Stand in the garage where the vans once unloaded their prisoners.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Topography of Terror
Excavated ruins of the Gestapo and SS headquarters, with an indoor exhibition beside a preserved stretch of the Berlin Wall.
Stasi Museum
Former secret-police headquarters, preserving the minister's office and hidden surveillance devices.
Gedenkstätte Plötzensee
Nazi-era execution site and hanging room, now a somber memorial to German resistance victims.
Sachsenhausen Memorial & Museum
Former concentration camp memorial preserving barracks, watchtowers, and a mass execution site.
Prenzlauer Berg
Working-class Berlin district turned bohemian enclave around a historic red-brick water tower.
Tränenpalast
Former Cold War border checkpoint with narrow inspection booths, now a Berlin Wall history museum.