Former KGB Prison Becomes National Memorial-Numerous Germans Tortured and Murdered in Former Parsonage
by Wolfgang Polzer
July 11, 2007
POTSDAM (ANS) -- The former Soviet secret service KGB had a prison in Germany, where numerous innocent citizens were tortured and murdered. The infamous prison - a former parsonage in Potsdam near Berlin - will be converted to become the first national memorial for KGB victims.The foundation stone was laid July 3. When the conversion is completed in spring 2008, the memorial will consist of the former prison and a new information and visitors center.
When the Red Army conquered Berlin and Potsdam in 1945, the parsonage was confiscated. From 1947 onwards the KGB used the facility as a prison for the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
After the German re-unification the Soviet troops pulled out in the early nineties and returned the property to the owners, the Protestant Aid Association (Evangelisch-Kirchlicher Hilfsverein).
During the ceremony the chairman of the association, Rev Reinhart Lange, recalled the fate of many innocent inmates. They had been incarcerated, tortured and expelled to Siberia. Only a few had returned.
The Brandenburg minister for cultural affairs, Johanna Wanka, described the former prison as a place of "state sanctioned terror and murder." For decades the widespread injustice under Communist rule had been ignored. The survivors deserve to be remembered, said Wanka.
One survivor, the 76-year-old Gunter Martins, described his ordeal. He was incarcerated in underground cells for six months in 1951. He was interrogated and beaten all night. Many innocent victims were sentenced to death and shot - "either here or in Moscow".
Martins was sentenced to 15 years hard labor in the Siberian camp Workuta. Neither the Soviet Union nor Russia had ever apologized for the injustice, said Martins.
The Protestant leader Bishop Wolfgang Huber reminded listeners of the havoc and destruction, which German had brought over Europe in World War II. He expressed gratitude for the determination of the allies to bring the terror regime of the Nazis to and end.
But as history shows, the liberators were also capable of evil deeds. The memorial should be a place of remembrance that "humans also fail in reaching their calling". But Christians would never give in to the assumption that the world is caught up in a "vicious circle of evil". "We can and we must break it," said the Bishop.
In his words it is one of the great miracles of our times that the Cold War did not end in a Hot War, and that the Iron Curtain came down without war. Huber: "God, the Lord of history, has been good to us".
© 2007 ASSIST News Service, used with permission.
