Lindenstrasse Memorial
into the garage
to the outdoor cells
Interview Horst S.
to the special exhibitions
Digital record of prisoners of the Soviet secret police 1945-52
Find the Film at US Library of Congress (Potsdam 9:45 - 15:08)
The Gray Despair of Potsdam. The Soviet Detention and Tribunal Site on Lindenstrasse 1945–1952
The unconditional surrender of the German Reich on 8 May 1945 marked the end of World War II in Europe. More than 60 million lives had been lost around the globe. The war's instigator, Germany, was governed and divided into four zones of occupation by the victors—the U.S., the Soviet Union, the U.K. and France. One important objective pursued by these nations was to punish war criminals and cleanse society of Nazi ideology. Within its occupation zone, the Soviet Union established and consolidated a communist dictatorship. In late July 1945, the Soviet secret service confiscated the prison site on Lindenstrasse for use as a detention prison. By 1952, the secret service had imprisoned more than 2,000 people here under harsh and often violent conditions. In the courtroom, military tribunals conducted trials that ignored any form of due process yet sentenced people to long prison terms or even death.In Stalin's terror system, "Lindenstrasse" served as a regional collection, tribunal, and transit prison in the Soviet zone and then in the newly created East Germany. This exhibition presents the latest research findings about this secret service site and the people interned there.
Candlestick from the chapel of the Lindenstrasse Court Prison, before 1945
After the Nazis came to power in January 1933, the court and prison site on Potsdam's Lindenstrasse became a place of racist persecution and ideology-driven justice. The site survived the war largely unscathed. In early May 1945, several departments of the city administration, whose offices had been destroyed during the war, briefly moved into the courthouse.The inventory sticker on the bottom of this liturgical candle holder indicates that it was used in the court prison chapel for religious services until the end of World War II. It was discovered sometime after 1989/90 in the attic of a house one street over on Gutenbergstrasse. It had very likely been stolen during the looting that took place in early May 1945.
Nazi Judicial Staff in Potsdam after 1945
It is estimated that when the Red Army entered Potsdam, only about a third of the judges, prosecutors, and other court employees were still present in the city. Many had either died in the final weeks of the war, fled from Soviet troops, or been arrested by the Soviet secret service. For the reestablishment of Potsdam's municipal court, the new rulers retained only 20 percent of the pre-war judicial staff. Most of the newly hired "legal professionals for immediate deployment" were people with legal expertise who had been persecuted by or were known to have opposed the Nazi regime.Order No. 49 issued by the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) on 4 September 1945 required the dismissal of all members of Nazi organizations who were employed by the courts and public prosecutor's offices. By the end of September 1945, this order had affected nearly half of all court employees in Potsdam. For the judiciary in the Soviet zone, denazification was considered officially completed at the end of 1945. The selected biographies presented here illustrate the different paths taken by former Nazi judicial staff following the end of the war in 1945.Karl Tetzlaff (1881–1945) Senior public prosecutor Karl Tetzlaff was born the son of a master baker on 17 March 1881 in Adlershorst in the Bromberg Region of Posen (now in Poland). He studied law, taking the first state examination in Breslau in 1902 and passing the second state examination in Berlin in 1907. He then worked as a junior prosecutor at various public prosecutor's offices in the province of Posen until he was himself appointed public prosecutor in Posen in 1911. Other stops on his career path included Magdeburg, Marienwerder, Berlin, and finally Potsdam, where he was appointed senior public prosecutor in 1930. In this function, he headed the prosecutor's office in the Potsdam regional court district and was responsible for the prosecution of criminal offenses. Between 1928 and 1930, he was a member of the left-liberal German Democratic Party (DDP) and, from 1933, of the Nazi party and some of its subordinate organizations, such as the National Socialist Judges' Association and the Reich Federation of German Civil Servants. Little is known about his professional activities or about his political stance during the Nazi dictatorship. The few trial records still available reveal that he frequently exploited legal loopholes to serve Nazi interests, though he remained notably restrained in his political assessments of criminal offenses. After the end of the war in 1945, contemporaries reported that he was usually "very harsh and ruthless" as a prosecutor, especially when it came to pleas of pardon. On the other hand, he was also said to have behaved benevolently. Others described him as a modest public servant who joined the Nazi Party less out of conviction than out of fear—to "avoid standing out." Immediately after the end of the war, Soviet troops arrested Karl Tetzlaff in Potsdam. He died on 8 June 1945 in the Soviet Speziallager (special camp) in Weesow near Werneuchen, northeast of Berlin.Dr. Fritz Hartmann (1897–1978) Regional Court Judge and Local Court Director Fritz Hartmann was born on 16 November 1897, the son of a senior teacher in Schöneberg near Berlin. After the First World War, in which he had lost his left leg, he completed his law studies in 1922 with the first state examination and in 1924 with the second state examination. From 1926 to 1945, he worked at the local and regional court in Potsdam, initially as an assistant judge, later as a regional judge and regional court judge, and from 1939 as local court director. In May 1933, he joined the Nazi party, having for many years sympathized with its agenda. After the Second World War, he remained active at the Potsdam municipal court until he was dismissed in mid-September 1945 due to his Nazi party membership. The police arrested him on 8 February 1946 and imprisoned him for three weeks in the police jail on Bauhofstrasse (formerly Prieststrasse). There, he was repeatedly questioned by officers of the Soviet occupation forces about his work as local court director and his responsibility with regard to the Nazi's Hereditary Health Court, but he was released again on 2 March 1946. After his imprisonment, he initially worked as a volunteer in the ecclesiastical service but was taken on as an employee in 1947. Although he received a "certificate of political reliability" from the Potsdam magistrate’s committee in December 1946, the denazification commission classified him as Nazi-tainted in February 1948. As a result, he was prohibited from holding positions of responsibility in public bodies or private companies. In 1953, he moved with his family via West Berlin to Düsseldorf, where he worked as a judge at the Social Court until 1963. Fritz Hartmann died on 29 February 1978 in Hanover.Heinrich Runge (1891–1961) Regional Court Director Heinrich Runge was born on 8 March 1891 in Friedrichsgüte (Ostprignitz) as the son of a forestry official. He completed his law studies in 1913 by passing the first state examination. His career interrupted by the First World War and a serious wound, as a result of which both his lower legs had to be amputated in 1917, he did not take the second state examination until 1921. In Halle (Saale), he was appointed auxiliary judge in 1921, local court judge in 1926, and regional court director in 1933. In 1936, he was transferred to Potsdam. He joined the Nazi party in April 1933. His superiors described him as a hard-working and esteemed judge, but also as politically reserved. At the end of May 1945, Heinrich Runge was appointed municipal court judge at the newly formed municipal court of Potsdam, but was dismissed again on 15 September 1945 due to his membership in the Nazi party. He subsequently worked as a lawyer and notary in Potsdam. His son, Peter Runge, was arrested on 2 May 1946 for wearing a white carnation as a symbol of protest against the Soviet occupation during the May Day demonstration and was sent to Lindenstrasse prison. He was later imprisoned at the Soviet special camp in Sachsenhausen and not released until mid-January 1950. In early 1947, the occupation authorities banned Heinrich Runge from working as a lawyer and notary, and a year later he was removed from the list of licensed lawyers and notaries. Afterwards, he worked in various law firms and in 1951 joined with lawyer Kurt Regel, who had been regional court president in Potsdam from 1946 to 1950. Both were under surveillance by the East German Ministry of State Security (Stasi) due to contacts to West Berlin. While Regel was arrested on 1 September 1954 and held at the Stasi's detention prison on Lindenstrasse, Runge had been warned and fled to West Berlin a few days later. Heinrich Runge died there on 29 March 1961.
Starting Over After the War
The Second World War began with the invasion of Poland by the German Wehrmacht on 1 September 1939. By the time it was over, much of Europe lay in ruins. The Nazi dictatorship had over ten million people murdered for racist or ideological reasons. Particularly for those persecuted and imprisoned by the Nazis, the Allied invasion was viewed as a liberation.Many simply felt relieved that the war was finally over. Many fled westwards in fear of the approaching Red Army. Most administrative and judicial systems ground to a halt. The Red Army freed all inmates from the court's prison. On 17 May 1945, the newly founded municipal court began its work in the Lindenstrasse courthouse and continued until the site was confiscated by the Soviet secret service.
Prison Conditions and Interrogation Practices
The only information we have about day-to-day life at Lindenstrasse prison comes from the recollections of former inmates. They speak of catastrophic conditions of hygiene. Their time in detention was marked by hunger, disease and lack of exercise. The situation was particularly desperate immediately after the war. Prison conditions varied depending on the year of arrest and on the behavior of the guards and fellow prisoners. The Lindenstrasse prison was at times completely overcrowded. Every link to the outside world was cut off. Many prisoners often did not know where they were.The interrogations, usually carried out at night, often went on for several hours. Confessions extorted with threats, beatings, ill treatment, or torture served as the basis for the conviction. Many suffered lifelong physical and psychological consequences. A few detainees are known to have died or committed suicide in prison due to the poor conditions.
The Soviet Occupation Zone
In the Soviet zone of occupation, Nazi war criminals were convicted by Soviet military tribunals (SMTs). These military courts operated in the place of regular courts. Their work was grounded in the laws passed by the Allied Control Council, but also in additional orders and decrees for the prosecution of war crimes, such as the "Ukas 43" decree, as well as the Soviet Criminal Code of 1926. With SMAD Order 201 of 16 August 1947, the Soviet occupation force transferred the mandate for punishing Nazi and war crimes to German courts. The SMTs, however, retained responsibility for prosecuting alleged or actual resistance to the occupation regime. A special court of the Ministry of State Security in Moscow (the Osoboe Soveshchanie, or OSO) also carried out convictions, particularly where certain intelligence information had to be kept secret from the army judiciary. Despite appearing to abide by rule-of-law principles, the SMT trials did no such thing.The SMTs did not convene publicly. The trials were held in Russian and only rarely was translation provided for Germans. Indictments and sentences were based on confessions extorted during the sometimes-brutal interrogations conducted during pretrial detention. These confessions were then considered undeniable evidence. No character references and no legal defense were permitted. The tribunals lasted anywhere from a few minutes to several days. The rulings often included disproportionately high sentences, even the death penalty.
Denazification and the New Dictatorship
Even before the war was over, the victorious Allies had agreed on the need to cleanse German society of Nazi ideology and to punish those responsible for the crimes committed in its name. After the war, they set up internment camps in their respective zones, where they detained more than 400,000 Germans for later court prosecution on the grounds of Nazi affiliation. Although the Allies had agreed on guidelines for denazification, in the end they did not follow a uniform approach.In the Soviet zone, responsibility for securing the occupation, for carrying out denazification, and for consolidating the new communist dictatorship lay with the NKVD, the Soviet state security agency and political secret police organization. Even after the founding of East Germany in 1949, the NKVD continued to arrest opponents and alleged opponents. Soviet military tribunals (SMTs) had by 1955 convicted some 70,000 German nationals.Map of the occupation zones, 1945–1949In their respective zones, the Allies set up military governments to exercise state power. But collaboration within the Allied Control Council, whose decisions on interzone issues had to be unanimous, proved difficult as Cold War animosities grew. Increasingly, the four powers acted independently of one another within their zones.
Detainees and Convicts
In the course of denazification and dictatorship consolidation, the Soviet secret service detained more than 2,000 men, women, and adolescents aged 13 to over 73 in the Lindenstrasse prison between 1945 and 1952. These prisoners included high-ranking Nazi offenders and accomplices, nominal Nazi party members, as well as many local and regional functionaries from government and business. From 1946, arrests increasingly focused on individuals and groups who resisted the occupation force or opposed the new communist dictatorship.The prisoners were transferred to Soviet special camps or to prisons on the territory of the Soviet Occupation Zone either as internees without trial or as SMT convicts, and many were later deported to penal labor camps in the Soviet Union. The 26 biographies presented here reveal how persecution practices served both denazification efforts and the consolidation of power. Be aware that the information provided here is often based on sparse source material.Death from Detention Dr. med. Rudolf Seitz (1894–1952) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: July 1945 to April 1946Rudolf Seitz was born the son of a telegraph director on 12 March 1894 in Königsberg. Nothing is known about his professional training. After taking part in the First World War, he was licensed as a physician in 1921. Until the early 1930s, he practiced as a gynecologist in Breslau (Wrocław). In his practice, he performed abortions – a criminal offense at the time. Several investigations pending against him for "commercial abortion" continued until 1939 before being dropped by the public prosecutor's office due to lack of evidence.Seitz repeatedly tried to obtain a license to practice as a registered physician. After holding various positions in Berlin, Frankfurt am Main and Munich, he was in October 1939 assigned "emergency duties" as an auxiliary physician with the Brandenburg Medical Association. He stood in for various physicians, starting in 1942 primarily in the city of Beelitz, Brandenburg. Fellow doctors considered him unreliable and slow, and as someone who often overstepped his authority. His colleague Dr. Valentin Kessel went so far as to accuse Seitz of sabotage due his leniency in issuing sick notes for prisoners of war.After the end of the Second World War, Seitz remained in Beelitz. He lived and worked in the practice of Dr. Kessel, who had fled. The Soviet secret service arrested Seitz on 10 June 1945 and later held him at Lindenstrasse prison. According to family accounts, Seitz was brutally mistreated and coerced into testifying against Dr. Kessel, who was also in prison. In April 1946, he was released from prison without a trial. Rudolf Seitz died on 27 June 1952 in Potsdam, his death a result of the abuse he had suffered in prison.Death Sentence for a Nazi Doctor Dr. med. Valentin Kessel (1890–1946) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: July 1945 to June 1946Valentin Kessel was born on 10 February 1890 in Sumatra (Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia). His father was a Protestant pastor. He completed his medical studies in 1919 – an endeavor interrupted by the First World War and a gunshot wound to the head – and was then licensed as a doctor. He opened a practice for general medicine in Beelitz and in 1920 took over as the voluntary director of the city's hospital. Kessel joined the Nazi party in 1931, the Sturmabteilung (SA) in 1933 and the Schutzstaffel (SS) in 1941. As the district head of the public health office, he was responsible for enforcing the hereditary biology directives in line with Nazi racial ideology.During the Second World War, Kessel also treated foreign forced laborers. In doing so, he repeatedly came into conflict with other doctors. Several times, for instance, he accused his colleague Dr. Rudolf Seitz of unnecessarily writing prisoners of war off sick. At the same time, the SA on multiple occasions questioned his stance on the Nazi ideology. He was considered "scheming, ambitious, and disobedient." One colleague even stated that Kessel had a "difficult character."On 13 July 1945, the Soviet secret service arrested Kessel and later sent him to Lindenstrasse prison. There, on 2 April 1946, an SMT sentenced him to death for the "deliberate killing of prisoners of war and foreign workers." The sentence was executed at an unknown location sometime before July 1946. The tribunal further ordered the confiscation of his property, which the city of Beelitz carried out in 1949. At the request of his wife, the district court of Potsdam-Land declared Valentin Kessel dead in 1953.Foreign Internees Time in Lindenstrasse prison: Summer/autumn 1945 Dr. Jean Marie Gérard Sauter (1914–1998)Jean Sauter was born on 31 October 1914 in Bône, Algeria, the son of a Dutch mining director and his wife from Germany. He came to Germany in 1936 to complete his secondary education and then studied medicine in Munich and Bonn from 1938 to 1942. In early 1942 he was placed in detention for three months for making statements critical of the war. He was then employed as an emergency duty assistant doctor, first in the city of Brandenburg/Havel and then, in April 1943, at the municipal hospital in Potsdam, where he worked in a managerial capacity until after the end of the war. The Soviet secret service arrested him on 4 July 1945 and later placed him in Lindenstrasse prison. They accused Sauter of leading a conspiratorial organization that was spying for the Dutch government in exile. As an internee, he was transferred on 18 August 1945 to the special camp at Ketschendorf, later to Fünfeichen and in 1948 to the Buchenwald special camp, from where he was released in early 1950 when the special camps were dissolved. Afterwards, he practiced as a physician, first in West Berlin and starting in the 1970s in Gelsenkirchen. Jean Sauter died there on 15 November 1998.Taira Hisano (1912–1945)Due to the close German-Japanese military relations during the Second World War, a large number of Japanese citizens resided in Germany when the war ended. In the Berlin area, most of them left Germany on 20 May 1945 on a special train and returned to Japan via Moscow and Siberia. Taira Hisano, born in 1912 in the Japanese prefecture of Kōchi, was one of the few who did not return. He had come to Germany in 1941 and lived in Berlin. The Soviet secret service arrested Hisano in the autumn of 1945 on charges of spying for Japan and placed him in Lindenstrasse prison. From there he was transferred as an internee to the Ketschendorf special camp on October 12, 1945, where Taira Hisano died on 3 December 1945.Camille Bacquet (1918–1986)Camille Bacquet was born on 27 August 1918 in Ormesson-sur-Marne near Paris. He was a French citizen and a printer by trade. For unknown reasons, he was living in Potsdam at the end of the war. Accused of having worked for the Gestapo since August 1944, the Soviet secret service arrested him and transferred him from Lindenstrasse prison on 2 November 1945 to the Ketschendorf special camp as an internee. When the special camps were dissolved, Camille Bacquet was released from the Buchenwald special camp in early 1950 and went to West Berlin together with other former internees to report on the prison conditions they had experienced. There is no record of his life after this point. Camille Bacquet died on 2 November 1986 in his hometown of Ormesson-sur-Marne.Death Sentence for Goebbels' "Right Hand" Werner Wächter (1902–1946) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: September 1945 to August 1946Werner Wächter was born on 9 May 1902 in Erfurt, the son of a school director. After finishing primary school, he completed a commercial apprenticeship and in 1923 began work as a sales representative. In 1922, he co-founded the Potsdam chapter of the Nazi party, of which he was a member. At the same time, he joined the Nazi's Sturmabteilung (SA). In July of 1932, he was elected to the Reichstag, an office he would hold until 1945. During the Nazi dictatorship, he worked full-time for the party and rose from head of propaganda for Berlin to chief of staff of the party's Reich Propaganda Directorate. He was considered the "right hand" of Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.At the end of World War II in 1945, Wächter briefly became a Soviet prisoner of war, but was soon released for health reasons and was able to return to his family in Potsdam. On 3 September 1945, the Soviet secret service arrested him and sent him to Lindenstrasse prison. He was accused of having led the Berlin regional cultural administration. Six months later, on 7 April 1946, Soviet soldiers also arrested Werner Wächter's eldest son Klaus. The 16-year-old was sentenced to death by an SMT in Potsdam's Villa Rütten & Loening along with other school students on charges of "anti-Soviet agitation and espionage." He was pardoned in August 1946 and the sentence commuted to 10 years in prison. He was released in 1950.An SMT sentenced Werner Wächter to death by firing squad. The sentence was probably carried out in August 1946 in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen or Potsdam. His wife was told nothing about her husband's whereabouts. She had him pronounced dead in 1953.Twice Imprisoned Hans-Joachim Wetzki (1929–2023) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: November 1945 to March 1946Hans-Joachim Wetzki was born on 5 October 1929 in Berlin-Reinickendorf. At age 15 and still in school, he volunteered for military service in the autumn of 1944. Towards the end of the war, he was recruited (he claims without his knowledge) along with other members of the Hitler Youth, into a Werwolf group in Dahlwitz near Berlin, which, however, never saw any action. The Werwolf organization was an attempt by the Nazi government to continue partisan-type combat activity in territories already liberated by the Allies.On 4 November 1945, Wetzki was arrested by the Soviet secret service in his parents' apartment and transferred to Lindenstrasse prison two weeks later. There he suffered severe mistreatment before an SMT sentenced him and other Dahlwitz youths on 27 December 1945 to death by firing squad on charges of Werwolf activity (Art. 58-8, 58-9 and 58-11 of the Soviet Criminal Code). On 27 February 1946, the sentence was commuted to 10 years in a labor camp. He was transferred to the NKVD prison in Neustrelitz, later to the Sachsenhausen special camp and to the Soviet camp complexes in Vorkuta and Karaganda.After being returned to East Germany and released on 10 February 1950, he completed accelerated training to become a police officer in West Berlin. Among other things, he collected information about victims of Stalinism in East Germany and was in contact with Western intelligence services. Because of these activities, the Ministry of State Security abducted the 22-year-old from West Berlin and brought him back to East Germany on 10 May 1952. On 21 October 1952, the East Berlin Regional Court sentenced him to seven years in prison for illegal weapons possession, sabotage and incitement against the state. Following his release on 9 May 1960, Hans-Joachim Wetzki lived and worked in West Berlin, where he died on 19 April 2023. He was rehabilitated in 1998.Convicted of Treason Yakov Isaakovich Shepetinsky (1920–2020) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: May 1946 to November 1946Yakov Shepetinsky was born in 1920 to Jewish parents in Słonim, a Polish town near the border to Belarus. He attended a Jewish grammar school, graduating in 1939. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, his entire family was murdered in raids and massacres by the German occupiers. He initially fought with the partisan resistance until the summer of 1944, when he joined the Red Army. This service took him through the Baltic States and Poland and finally to Germany. When the war ended, he was in an army hospital near the city of Brandenburg/Havel.With the German he had acquired at school, Shepetinsky began work as an interpreter for the military in July 1945 and then for the Soviet secret service (NKVD) in Neuruppin starting in late 1945. In this role, he was also involved in investigations of Nazi perpetrators as part of denazification efforts. He was arrested in Neuruppin on 12 April 1946 on charges of spying for the British secret service and in mid-May transferred to Lindenstrasse prison. Despite suffering severe physical violence, he refused to sign a confession. Nonetheless, an SMT convicted him of treason and sentenced him on 28 October 1946 to 10 years in a prison camp (Art. 58-1b and 59-9 of the Soviet Criminal Code). On 28 November 1946, Shepetinsky was transferred to the special camp in Torgau and from there to various camps of the Gulag system.On 15 December 1954, he was granted early release and two years later his sentence was overturned by the Supreme Soviet Court on the grounds of proven innocence. Shepetinsky emigrated to Israel in 1966. In 1973, he testified before a Hamburg court against Gerhard Erren, the Nazi war criminal who oversaw the Słonim massacres. Yakov Shepetinsky died on 16 September 2020 in Israel.A Nazi Criminal in Court Ferdinand Niedermeyer (1874–1947) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: May 1946 to December 1946Ferdinand Niedermeyer was born on 24 February 1874 in Saint Petersburg, Russia, the son of a master tailor. After gaining a degree in teaching, he completed a commercial apprenticeship and worked as an authorized signatory for a private commercial bank. He quickly rose through the ranks and subsequently worked for numerous companies and individuals on financial matters and as a stock market correspondent for international newspapers. He published writings on the struggle for "Germanness abroad" in the East, was in demand as a political expert, and held dozens of positions on the boards of directors and advisory committees of internationally active companies, including, until his retirement in 1932, as deputy director of Deutsche Bank.Niedermeyer joined the Nazi party in 1937 and quickly became a sought-after point of contact. One year after the German invasion of France in 1940, the party sent him to Paris as a special representative. There, as head of the Niedermeyer Office, named after him, he was responsible for the "Aryanization" of Jewish companies from Eastern Europe. In total, the agency confiscated assets worth around 100 million Reichsmarks over a period of three years.The Soviet secret service arrested Niedermeyer on 17 May 1946 at his home in Damsdorf near Potsdam and placed him in Lindenstrasse prison. There, on 24 September 1946, an SMT sentenced him to 10 years in prison on the charge of "armed insurrection" (Art. 58-2 of the Soviet Criminal Code), an offense that was often used in connection with war crimes or Nazi crimes committed in Eastern European countries. Ferdinand Niedermeyer was transferred to the Sachsenhausen special camp on 25 December 1946, where he died on 12 February 1947.Specialist on the Soviets' List Heinz Schmehl (1900–1947) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: July 1946 to late summer 1946Heinz Schmehl was born on 12 December 1900 in Bremen. After completing his studies in geodesy, he began work as a research assistant in 1924 and became a head of department at the Geodesic Institute Potsdam in 1932. From 1929, he also worked as a private lecturer in geodesy at the Technical University of Berlin, where he was appointed full professor in 1937. His scientific work involved measurements aimed at determining the figure of the earth. From 1939 to 1945, he served as director of the Geodetic Institute Potsdam. Also in 1939, he applied for membership in the Nazi party, into which he was admitted in 1940.After the Second World War, Schmehl was arrested by the Soviet occupation forces on 7 January 1946 and interned in the Sachsenhausen special camp. The official charge read: "Deputy intelligence agent." As a scientist, however, he possessed knowledge that was important for the war's victors. In the early summer of 1946, the Soviet secret service began selecting potential candidates for what would be known as "Operation Ossoaviakhim." During this operation, more than 2,200 German scientists and engineers were relocated from the Soviet occupation zone to the Soviet Union on 21–22 October 1946.In June 1946, the head of the Soviet secret service in Potsdam, Konstantin Pimenov, requested a list of names of specialists interned in the Sachsenhausen special camp. The 108 people on this list, including Heinz Schmehl, were taken to Lindenstrasse Prison in July 1946 for interrogation by the secret service. Only a small number of them were actually sent to the Soviet Union. Most were transported back to the Sachsenhausen special camp, including Heinz Schmehl, who died there on 24 May 1947.A Briton in Soviet Custody Frank Kelly (1916–2004) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: August 1946 to June 1947Frank Kelly was born in London on 16 October 1916, the son of an American soldier, and grew up with his grandparents. After working at various odd jobs, he was drafted into the British Army in 1944. He signed up with a paratrooper unit. During the Battle of Arnhem in the Netherlands, he was taken prisoner by the Germans. He was held in a prisoner of war camp in Mühlberg/Elbe until May 1945.After liberation, the Soviet occupation troops sent him to the British embassy in Berlin. On the way there, he was intercepted and checked by Soviet soldiers at Falkenberg/Elster. Fearing arrest, he fled to Leipzig, hoping to get help from American units stationed there, but they had already left the city. He remained in Leipzig and found friends there, including one Rosemarie Petzold. In January 1946, Soviet soldiers took him into custody to determine why he was in Leipzig. After five months in detention, he was released and he left Leipzig for West Berlin together with Rosemarie Petzold.While still in the Soviet zone, the two were separately arrested by Soviet units in the summer of 1946. Both were then transferred in August 1946 to Lindenstrasse prison. The Soviet secret service accused Kelly of spying for Western intelligence agencies. He claimed a case of mistaken identity, went on hunger strike several times, and survived two suicide attempts. Without a conviction, he was deported to the Soviet Union in June 1947 and imprisoned for six years in Vladimir Central Prison near Moscow. He was not released until November 1953, when he was handed over to the British military in Berlin. Just one year later, he completed his memoirs of Soviet imprisonment and published them in Great Britain. Nothing is known about his life after this point. Rosemarie Petzold was released from Lindenstrasse prison after almost a year in detention without an SMT conviction. Frank Kelly died on 20 January 2004.The Grand Admiral's Wife Erika Raeder (1888–1959) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: December 1946 to July 1947Erika Hindermann was born on 2 January 1888 in Berlin. Nothing is known about her life before she married navy officer Erich Raeder in 1920. Erich Raeder was appointed commander-in-chief of the German navy in 1928 and during the Nazi regime played a decisive role in the preparation and conduct of the war at sea. The Raeders acquired a plot of land in Potsdam's Stubenrauchstrasse and in the summer of 1942 moved into the villa they had built there. Due to differences of opinion about the conduct of naval warfare, Adolf Hitler dismissed Grand Admiral Raeder as commander-in-chief in early 1943. After the end of the Second World War, the Raeders were arrested in their home on 23 June 1945 by the head of the Soviet secret service (NKVD) in Potsdam, Konstantin Pimenov, and flown to Moscow in August. The aim was to get Erich Raeder, as a high-ranking military officer, to reveal information about the German navy. The Western Allies, however, wanted to press charges against him at the Nuremberg trials of the major war criminals. The couple was returned to Germany in October 1945, with Erich Raeder taken to the Nuremberg Palace of Justice prison and Erika Raeder to the NKVD prison at Luckenwalde, where she was interned by the Soviet secret service for over a year. In letters to her husband, she accuses Pimenov of being responsible for the looting of their villa in Potsdam.In December 1946, following several requests for permission to visit her husband in Nuremberg, Erika Raeder was taken to secret service headquarters in the Villa Ingenheim in Potsdam and a short time later to Lindenstrasse prison. In mid-July 1947, the NKVD transferred her without conviction to the Sachsenhausen special camp, where she was interned until her release on 1 July 1949. She then fled to West Germany. Her husband was released from prison on health grounds in 1955 and the couple moved to Kiel, where Erika Raeder died on 2 August 1959.Concentration Camp Commander Convicted for Spying Ernst Kannenberg (1894–?) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: May 1947 to December 1947Ernst Kannenberg was born the son of a carpenter on 30 August 1894. After training as a bank clerk and serving as a soldier in the First World War, he initially worked for an insurance company. He later switched to the Disconto-Gesellschaft, one of the largest German banks, before becoming a self-employed property manager and tax consultant in 1927 and living primarily from rental income of an inherited property. In 1933, Kannenberg joined the German nationalist and militaristic Stahlhelm association. In the course of the Nazification process, he was taken on by the Sturmabteilung (SA), but withdrew from the organization a few months later. There is no evidence that he ever joined the Nazi party. At the start of World War II, he was drafted into the Wehrmacht, working to build and administer prisoner of war camps, primarily in Eastern Europe, until 1944. Due to an injury, he was transferred to the Waffen-SS in June 1944, which appointed him commander of the Falkensee concentration camp, a subcamp of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.After the war, former camp inmates testified during his denazification proceedings in 1945/46 that Kannenberg, in contrast to his violent predecessor, had tried to improve camp conditions. These investigations were not yet completed when, on 24 May 1947, he was arrested by Soviet occupation authorities. On 31 July 1947, the SMT in Potsdam sentenced him to 25 years in prison on charges of espionage (Art. 58-6 of the Soviet Criminal Code). Kannenberg was granted early release from Bautzen prison in 1950. His subsequent fate remains unknown.Denazification Proceedings Paul Boese (1904–1954) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: September 1947 to December 1947Paul Boese was born the son of a weaver on 17 December 1904 in the town of Nowawes near Potsdam. He learns the hairdressing trade but in the mid-1920s worked as a boring mill operator in a metalworking shop. Boese joined the Nazi party in 1931. He had already joined the Sturmabteilung (SA) two years earlier, where he had quickly attained the rank of Sturmbannführer ("assault unit leader"). He emerged as a driving force and initiator of violent clashes between the SA and Communist party supporters in Nowawes in the early 1930s. During a police investigation of Boese after the war, several witnesses reported suffering extreme abuse and persecution at his hands in the years after 1933.At the end of the Second World War, Boese went into hiding in the Western Allied zones. For reasons that are not known, he was present in Potsdam in early August of 1947. He was arrested there by the K5 criminal investigation department in Potsdam. They handed him over to the Soviet Military Administration (SMA) on 27 September 1947, which then sent him in Lindenstrasse prison. On 22 November 1947, an SMT sentenced Boese under Control Council Law No. 10 to 20 years in prison. The charge read: Mistreatment of Soviet citizens. He served his sentence at the Bautzen special camp and later in Brandenburg prison. One year after his conviction, the K5 criminal investigation department, the forerunner of the East German Ministry for State Security, initiated denazification proceedings against Boese in accordance with Control Council Directive No. 38 and SMAD Order 201. However, these proceedings were discontinued due to his imprisonment. Paul Boese was released prematurely on 17 January 1954 and died just five weeks later on 1 March 1954 in Potsdam-Babelsberg.A Schoolgirl Under Arrest Helga Wunsch (1928–2024) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: October 1947 to April 1948Helga Wunsch was born on 6 April 1928 as the daughter of a business owner in Frankfurt (Oder). She was in the middle of taking here school-leaving exams when the Soviet secret service arrested the schoolgirl in her parents' home on 14 October 1947. She was one of 45 persons arrested in and around Frankfurt (Oder) by the spring of 1948. Many of them did not know each other prior to their arrests, yet they were linked by their rejection of antidemocratic developments in the Soviet Occupation Zone. The Soviet secret service accused them of organizing resistance and gave them the name "Liberal Organization," or "LO Group."On the day after her arrest, Helga Wunsch was transferred to Lindenstrasse prison and subjected to multiple interrogations involving the use of physical force. The charge read: Agent activity and member of an illegal organization. On 31 March 1948, an SMT sentenced her and 26 other defendants to 25 years in a penal labor camp for espionage and forming an illegal group (Art. 58-6 and 58-11 of the Soviet Criminal Code). In a second joint trial, twelve persons were sentenced on 25 September 1948, also to 25 years in a labor camp.Helga Wunsch served her sentence in the Bautzen and Sachsenhausen special camps and in the Hoheneck prison for women, from where she was released early under an amnesty on 27 December 1955. She fled to West Germany and there earned a teaching degree. After marrying an American, Karl Rist, in 1961, she emigrated to the U.S. and worked as a German teacher until retiring in 2006. She was rehabilitated in 1994. Helga Rist died on 17 March 2024 in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, USA. She donated her prison diaries and the secret "blood letter" to the Lindenstrasse Memorial Foundation.Convicted in a Joint Trial Dr. med. Rudolf-Albrecht Preiser (1899–1972) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: October 1947 to 30 May 1948Rudolf-Albrecht Preiser was born on 18 May 1899 in the district of Opole (Upper Silesia) as the son of a Protestant pastor. In 1917, at the age of 18, he left to take part in the First World War. In 1925, after studying medicine and obtaining his doctorate in Jena, he received his license as a general practitioner and worked in various practices. He became a member of the Nazi party in April 1933 and also joined the Sturmabteilung (SA), in which he was active as a medical Sturmführer ("assault leader").In March 1935, Preiser was licensed as a general practitioner in the town of Sorau in Lower Lusatia. In late 1942, he was also made responsible for providing medical care to all of the forced laborers in the village. After the Second World War, Preiser worked as a doctor in the returnee camp set up in Gronenfelde near Frankfurt (Oder) in 1946. This camp served as a central hub for the repatriation of prisoners of war released from the Soviet Union.In October 1947, the Soviet secret service arrested him and later placed him in Lindenstrasse prison. Sixteen others who also held various jobs in the returnee camp, were likewise arrested. The Soviet secret service accused them of acts of terror, anti-Soviet propaganda, and forming an illegal group. In a joint trial held on 22/23 May 1948, they were each sentenced to 25 years in a labor camp (Art. 58-9 of the Soviet Criminal Code). Preiser served his sentence, which was reduced to 15 years in 1956, in the Bautzen special camp and later in various East German prisons. His family in West Germany was able, with legal assistance, to get him released from prison in February 1958. He fled to West Germany in 1960 and began practicing as a doctor in Pirmasens, Rhineland-Palatinate, in 1961. Dr. Rudolf-Albrecht Preiser died in the town of Lemgo on 18 July 1972. The Moscow Military Prosecutor's Office rehabilitated him in 1995.Convicted as a Nazi Perpetrator Oskar Freidank (1905–1978) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: January 1948 to March 1948Oskar Freidank was born on 14 January 1905 in Drewitz near Potsdam as the son of railroad employee. After finishing primary school, he learned the metalworking trade and found employment at the Orenstein & Koppel engineering company. There he later also took on the role of shop steward, and was responsible for ensuring the implementation of Nazi ideological policies within the company. Freidank joined the Nazi party in 1941. In the final months of the war, he was taken prisoner by the Soviets as a member of the Volkssturm militia. He returned from Soviet captivity in August 1945.In the course of a police investigation in the spring of 1946, several people testified that Freidank had repeatedly "severely abused, beaten, harassed, and denounced" Soviet prisoners of war and forced laborers. One testified that he was an "extremely brutal, hot-tempered person, capable of the worst cruelty." The criminal investigation department then offered to transfer Freidank to the Soviet occupation authorities, but this apparently did not happen, given that he then began work at the sawmill of the Potsdam forest service.It was not until late January 1948 that the Soviet secret service arrested Freidank and placed him in Lindenstrasse prison. At the beginning of March 1948, the SMT in Potsdam sentenced him to 18 years in prison for crimes against humanity under Control Council Law No. 10. He served his time in the Bautzen special camp and in the Waldheim penitentiary until receiving early release in January 1954. Nothing is known about his life after this point. Oskar Freidank died on 29 October 1978 in Potsdam-Babelsberg.A Cold War Spy Dolores Franze (1919–after 1980) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: May 1948 to August 1948Dolores (nicknamed "Dolly") Franze was probably born on 3 September 1919 in Karlsruhe. After the early death of her father, she spent her childhood in a children's home and with foster parents until her mother took her back in 1934. She worked in a laundry in Bad Freienwalde, trained to be a sales assistant in Eberswalde, and learned the nursing profession in Neuruppin. During World War II, she was sent to Warsaw to work as a nurse. After the war she moved to Lübeck. There she got her first engagement on the operetta stage and took acting lessons.In January 1947, Franze returned to Bad Freienwalde, where she worked as an actress. Together with friends, she founded an underground movement called "Edelweiss" as a resistance group against the Soviet occupying forces. She also sought contact with the Combat Group Against Inhumanity (KgU) in West Berlin, which supported resistance actions and performed intelligence work. The Soviet secret service arrested Dolly Franze on 20 April 1948 and then detained the other nine members of her group. In May 1948, she was transferred to Lindenstrasse prison and sentenced on 31 July 1948 to 25 years' imprisonment by the Brandenburg SMT for espionage, anti-Soviet agitation, forming an illegal group, and other offenses (Art. 58-6, 58-8, 58-9, 58-10 and 58-11 of the Soviet Criminal Code). She served her sentence in the Sachsenhausen special camp and then in the Hoheneck women's prison until her release on 17 January 1954.The Ministry of State Security (MfS) recruited Franze as a secret informant in 1956 but ended their collaboration 16 months later after rumors about her spying activities circulated publicly. Little is known about her life after this point. Dolores Franze moved to Berlin, where she died, probably in the 1980s.Arrested as a Social Democrat Charlotte Broh (1903–1981) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: December 1948 to November 1949Charlotte Macht was born on 15 May 1903 in Frankfurt (Oder), the daughter of a postal worker. She trained as an office clerk, married the Social Democrat Martin Broh in 1934, and like him became involved in social democratic causes. The Nazi regime persecuted her husband because he was Jewish, arrested him several times, and banned him from working in 1938. Charlotte Broh was the lone provided for her family until the end of the war, surviving in hiding until the Red Army invaded in early 1945.After the Second World War, she worked for the city administration in Frankfurt (Oder). Starting in 1946, she managed the municipal dairy center while her husband supervised the residents' registration office. Both were again active in the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and maintained contacts with party members in Potsdam and Berlin. In a wave of arrests, Charlotte Broh was detained on 3 December 1948 by the Soviet secret service and transferred to Lindenstrasse prison in Potsdam. After learning of his wife's arrest, Martin Broh fled with their daughter via West Berlin and Oldenburg to Bremen. A special commission in Moscow sentenced Charlotte Broh to 10 years in a labor camp on charges of espionage, anti-Soviet propaganda and membership in a counter-revolutionary organization (Art. 58-6, 58-10 and 58-11 of the Soviet Criminal Code).After serving time in the Sachsenhausen special camp and the Soviet penal labor camp in Vorkuta, she moved to the West in 1954, traveling via the Friedland reception camp to join her family in Bremen. In 1955, she published an anonymous account of her time in captivity. Little is known about her life after this point. Charlotte Broh died on 11 October 1981 in Bremen. She was rehabilitated in 1999.A Convicted Nazi Collaborator Vincas Urbanavičius (1911–?) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: April 1949 to August 1949Vincas Urbanavičius was born in 1911 in the small community of Joniškėlis in northern Lithuania. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, he worked for the Lithuanian security police, known as Saugumas. Installed by the Nazi regime, this agency played a key role in the persecution of political opponents and the murder of around 200,000 Lithuanian Jews. For unknown reasons, Urbanavičius was brought to the German Reich in 1943 and served in the Wehrmacht. In early May 1945, he was captured by the French as a prisoner of war and then handed over to the Soviet authorities in October. They brought him to repatriation camp 282 in Torgau and then to camp 226 in Brandenburg/Havel. There he worked as a metalworker for the Soviet Ministry of State Security (MGB).In August 1948, Urbanavičius was supposed to return to Lithuania, but instead he fled with his German girlfriend to Braunschweig in the British zone, where he made contact with British intelligence. The Soviet secret service found out about this. After extensive investigations, including allegations of aiding and abetting Nazi murders in Lithuania, the Brandenburg SMT sentenced him, in absentia, on 3 December 1948 to 25 years' imprisonment for treason (Art. 58-1 of the Soviet Criminal Code).On 18 February 1949 he was arrested by Soviet units in the Soviet zone. It is unclear how he got to the Soviet zone and why he was there. He was taken to Lindenstrasse prison, probably in April 1949, and transferred to the Sachsenhausen special camp in August of that year. He was held in the Kemerovo camp complex in Siberia until 1955. On 23 April 1956, Vincas Urbanavičius was released from the Lithuanian KGB prison in Vilnius. His subsequent fate remains unknown.Persecuted by Two Dictatorships Ernst Tschickert (1889–1951) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: September 1949 to summer 1950Ernst Tschickert was born on 29 August 1889 in Berlin. He learned the metalworking trade and joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) at an early age. After the First World War, he moved to Cottbus, where he met his future wife, Martha. They were actively involved in the SPD and later moved to Spremberg. When the Nazis came to power, both were persecuted as political opponents and Tschickert was imprisoned in the Sonnenburg concentration camp in July 1933. In October 1935, the couple was arrested for their leading roles in a resistance group and sentenced to long prison terms. After serving their sentences, Martha Tschickert was sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and Ernst Tschickert to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. They were both freed when the Nazi dictatorship ended in the spring of 1945.In the summer of 1945, Ernst Tschickert began rebuilding the SPD in Spremberg. He took over the chairmanship of the new SPD until it was forced to merge with the communist KPD to form the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in March 1946. He worked as head of the district labor court and was a member of the Spremberg city council. On 30 September 1949, the Soviet secret service arrested him and placed him in Lindenstrasse prison. The charge read: Links to the SPD East Office in West Berlin. This office served as a contact point for SPD members fleeing from the East and coordinated resistance activities in the Soviet zone, but it also performed intelligence work.On 28 June 1950, a special commission in Moscow sentenced Tschickert to 15 years in a penal labor camp for espionage and underground activities (Art. 58-6, 58-10 and 58-11 of the Soviet Criminal Code). He was then transferred to the Tayshet camp complex in Siberia. Ernst Tschickert died there on 24 December 1951 as a result of a work accident. The location of his grave is not known. He was rehabilitated in 2002. A memorial plaque commemorating his fate was erected in Spremberg in 2009.Father and Son in Custody Dr. med. Fritz Landt (1891–1969) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: December 1949 to October 1950Fritz Landt was born on 2 March 1891 in Berlin, the son of a registrar in the Foreign Office. After returning from the First World War, he was licensed as a doctor in 1919. Two years later, he opened his own practice for skin and venereal diseases in Potsdam. He joined the Nazi party on 1 May 1933 and from 1939 was also the chief physician at the municipal hospital.Landt was arrested by Soviet authorities on 30 November 1949 and interrogated at the Villa Ingenheim for three days. The Soviet secret service accused him of espionage due to his repeated visits to the American hospital in Berlin-Lichterfelde and interned him for nine months in Lindenstrasse prison. He later told of further interrogations during which he was severely mistreated. In early October 1950, he was informed that a special commission in Moscow had sentenced him on charges of espionage to 25 years in a penal labor camp. Back in 1946, Soviet authorities had already arrested his son, Hans-Wolfgang Landt (1929-1946), detained him at Leistikowstrasse prison, sentenced him to death on suspicion of membership in a counter-revolutionary organization and acts of terror, and executed him.Fritz Landt was deported to the Siberian penal labor camp in Tayshet, where he for a time worked as a doctor again. He returned to West Germany on 20 October 1955. He practiced as a dermatologist in Hamburg until his death on 15 October 1969. Fritz Landt was rehabilitated in 2002.Abducted from West Berlin Kurt Koblitz (1916–1979) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: November 1950 to May 1952Kurt Koblitz was born to a miner's family on 27 September 1916 in Dittersbach (now Dzietrzychów, Poland). He completed an apprenticeship in wholesale and retail trading and initially worked as a clerk for the Nazi's Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude, KdF) organization and later as a sports instructor. He joined the Nazi party in 1936 and was drafted into the military in October 1938.After the Second World War, Koblitz settled in the state of Brandenburg. He joined the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in September 1945 and remained a member even after the forced merger with the communist KPD to form the Socialist Unity Party (SED). On 20 October 1946, he was elected to the Brandenburg parliament for the SED. Due to the anti-democratic developments in the Soviet zone/East Germany, Koblitz and his wife fled to West Berlin on 11 January 1950. The Ministry of State Security (MfS) suspected him of working as an agent for a US intelligence service and abducted him from West Berlin on 16 November 1950 and brought him back to East Germany. After being handed over to the Soviet secret service, he was placed in Lindenstrasse prison on 18 November 1950. On 18 August 1951, a special commission in Moscow sentenced him to 25 years in a labor camp on charges of espionage (Art. 58-6 of the Soviet Criminal Code).Koblitz was taken to the Vorkuta camp complex, from where he was released to West Berlin on 16 October 1955. He later worked as a miner in Aachen, where in 1972 he was elected to represent his constituency in the West German parliament. He remained in office until his death on 13 October 1979. Kurt Koblitz was rehabilitated in 1997.Shot in Moscow Hans Viktor Moser (1910–1952) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: November 1950 to early 1951Hans Moser was born the son of a doctor on 8 June 1910 in Weimar. After graduating from secondary school, he completed an apprenticeship as a commercial employee at Daimler-Benz A.G. in Berlin. He joined the Nazi party on 1 May 1932 and remained a member until 1940. After the Second World War and a serious war injury, he worked as a sales representative until 1948 and then as a driver in Thuringia.During this time, according to a later statement from a fellow prisoner, he participated in a resistance movement called the Always Be Ready (Immer Bereit Sein, IBS) group. With some 200 members, this group was primarily active in the states of Thuringia and Saxony. Its activities included passing on information to Western intelligence agencies and planning armed resistance actions against Soviet occupation forces in the event of war. In the late 1940s, Soviet military counterintelligence and the Soviet secret service (NKVD/MGB) were on the trail of the IBS group. By February 1949, they had arrested most of its alleged and actual members.On 5 July 1950, East German police also arrested Hans Moser in Weimar and turned him over to the Soviet secret service, who in November 1950 transferred him, along with eight others, to Lindenstrasse prison. They were sentenced by SMT No. 48240 in Berlin-Lichtenberg to death by firing squad on charges of espionage (Art. 58-6 of the Soviet Criminal Code). Moser and five other persons received their verdicts on 23 November 1950. His petition for clemency was rejected on 3 February 1951, and the sentence was carried out in Moscow on 12 February 1951. His remains were cremated and buried at Moscow's Donskoye Cemetery. Moser's family searched intensively for him and only learned of his death in 1959. Hans Viktor Moser was rehabilitated in 1995.Convicted for Distributing Leaflets Theodor Desens (1930–2020) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: April 1951 to August 1951Theodor Desens was born on 13 April 1930 to a farming family in Hermannshöhe (now Radosław, Poland). Here he attended primary school and worked for his parents. After the end of the Second World War, he performed forced labor under Polish rule until he was expelled from his homeland in 1947. In Möllensee near Berlin he was employed as a transport worker in the woodworking industry.Driven by his rejection of communist rule, he took up contact with the Combat Group Against Inhumanity (KgU) in West Berlin in 1950, a group which supported the resistance against the SED dictatorship in East Germany and was active in intelligence work. He helped to distribute dissident leaflets near Rüdersdorf, not far from Berlin. The East German Ministry of State Security (MfS) arrested Desens and twelve others in March 1951 and in early April handed them over to the Soviet secret service, which then sent them to Lindenstrasse prison. The charge read: Contacting and joining an anti-Soviet underground group and dissemination of anti-democratic leaflets.In a joint trial with nine other people, an SMT sentenced him to 25 years in a penal labor camp under Articles 58-10 and 58-11 of the Soviet Criminal Code. He was deported to Vorkuta to perform forced labor. Three co-defendants received death sentences, which were carried out in Moscow. Immediately after his return in 1955, Desens fled to West Berlin. Until his retirement in 1991, he worked as a technical employee in Gummersbach, where he lived with his family. He was rehabilitated in 1996 and was active in the victims' association Lagergemeinschaft Workuta (Vorkuta camp community) until his death on 29 October 2020.Remote Verdict from Moscow Margarete Mehlhemmer (1894–1971) Time in Lindenstrasse prison: April 1951 to December 1951Margarete Derlam was born on 15 October 1894 in Frankfurt am Main. She completed her training as a nurse and during the First World War married businessman Dr. Alfred Mehlhemmer, the co-owner of an aircraft propeller factory. Due to his connections to American intelligence services, the Gestapo detained Alfred Mehlhemmer for one year in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in early 1942. His company was confiscated. After his release, he was shot and killed under unclear circumstances by the estate owner Karl von Kaehne in Petzow near Potsdam.After the Second World War, Margarete Mehlhemmer, who lived on the estate in Petzow, was officially recognized as a "victim of fascism." Due to her contacts in the Western occupation zones, she was under constant surveillance. The East German Ministry of State Security (MfS) arrested her on 19 April 1951 on charges of spying for the American secret service and transferred her that same day to the Soviet secret service, which placed her in Lindenstrasse prison. In December, a special commission in Moscow sentenced her to 15 years in a labor camp on charges of espionage and sabotage (Art. 58-6 and 58-14 of the Soviet Criminal Code).She served her sentence in the Tayshet camp district in Siberia until her release in the fall of 1955. Margarete Mehlhemmer would suffer the rest of her life from the effects of her imprisonment. On 24 June 1971, she committed suicide in Freiburg/Breisgau. She was rehabilitated in 2000.
The Lindenstrasse Detention and Tribunal Site
Within the Soviet zone, the secret service NKVD had both local operational groups as well as interregional operational sectors that aligned with German territories. The judicial facilities on Lindenstrasse were seized by the Soviet secret service in late July 1945 and placed under the direct control of the head of the NKVD/MVD operational sector in the state of Brandenburg. The complex, which extends from Lindenstrasse 53 to 56, was the Soviet secret service's central detention prison for the entire Soviet zone until the end of 1946, and served afterwards only for the NKVD's Brandenburg operational sector. The site was also a venue for military courts. A light-colored palisade board fence with additional barbed wire secured the grounds and shielded it from view. Behind it, more than 2,000 men, women, and adolescents were held in custody between 1945 and 1952. Most were German or Soviet nationals, but there were also many people from other European countries.Not a word leaked out about the inhumane conditions of detention, the brutal interrogation methods, or the draconian sentences handed down by the tribunals. Only very few photographs exist. Fearing arrest, the photographer took the large image on the right secretly from the doorway of the house opposite. The photo above was taken by an American soldier. As intended, the visual barriers also served as a deterrent.
Kurt Koblitz (on left) at the Friedland reception camp following his return, 1955
Before 1953, there were only isolated cases of prisoners being released. After negotiations between West Germany and Moscow, the last of the German prisoners had returned by 1956. Many of them, like Kurt Koblitz, passed through the Friedland reception camp in the West German state of Lower Saxony. With few exceptions, all SMT convicts in East Germany had also been released from prison by 1956.
Soviet prison camp clothing, around 1955
Most returnees received a new set of clothes prior to being transported home. With this gesture, the Soviet Union tried to give the impression that it had taken good care of the prisoners. When Gerd Utech was given this padded jacket, it was still new and unworn. But the accounts of many returnees in fact mentioned badly worn clothing, poor work gear, and extreme weather conditions during their detention. The Utech family kept this jacket as a memento until donating it to the Lindenstrasse Memorial in 2021.Leather soccer ball, 1955Karl Keller, a soccer player who was arrested in 1951 and sentenced to 25 years in a penal labor camp on 20 March 1952, was sent this soccer ball by a friend from Reutlingen while at the returnee transit camp at Sukhobezvodnoye, near Gorky, in 1955. It was then put to good use every day. The easing of restrictions following Stalin's death in 1953 included allowing prisoners to form soccer teams in the camps. Keller kept this ball for decades as a memento.Flowers to welcome home Erich Beiersdorf, 28 December 1953The car mechanic Erich Beiersdorf was arrested in February 1951 along with numerous other Eberswalde residents and sent to Lindenstrasse prison. There, an SMT sentenced him in June 1951 to 25 years in a penal labor camp. As part of an amnesty, he was able to return home from Vorkuta in December 1953. In this impressive photo, the family captured the overwhelming joy at the arrival of the tradesman, who was well-known in Eberswalde. Wooden spoon and two caskets, 1953Erich Beiersdorf brought this tablespoon as well as two handmade caskets back to East Germany as mementos. The undersides of the boxes are elaborately decorated. The motif shows the winding tower and the slag heaps at the Vorkuta penal labor camp as well as a reindeer of the indigenous Komi people. One of the lids is engraved with the initials "EB" and the dates of imprisonment.
Remembering and Reckoning
Following Stalin's death in 1953, the dissolution of the Gulag system, and talks between West Germany and the Soviet Union, thousands of prisoners of war, SMT convicts, and internees had by early 1956 returned to Germany from Soviet captivity. Only a small number of returnees remained in East Germany. Many fled to West Germany, where they were recognized as political prisoners and granted reparations. During the Cold War, the initial interest in the accounts of their imprisonment waned. In East Germany, victims had to remain silent about their experiences in captivity. Many reported being watched over by the East German State Security.It was only after the fall of the communist dictatorships in 1989/90 that a broader social and cross-border reckoning with the past could begin. The academic and societal debate concerning appropriate forms of remembrance continues to this day. The Russian Chief Prosecutor's Office had by 2021 overturned approximately 11,000 unjust verdicts and rehabilitated the victims.
Cell door in the basement of the Lindenstrasse detention site, undated
The fact that this basement door had been retrofitted with air openings and a peephole suggests that the Soviet secret service had made detention cells out of basement spaces previously used for storage. In addition, remarkably preserved inscriptions refer to a long sentence of 25 years in a labor camp, which was the typical sentence handed down by the Soviet military tribunals.
Negotiating table at the Potsdam Conference, July 1945
At Cecilienhof Palace in Potsdam, the main victorious powers—the U.S., the Soviet Union, and the U.K.—held consultations on shaping the post-war order for Germany and Europe. They decided, among other things, on the demilitarization, decentralization, democratization, and denazification of Germany. By denazification they meant both the removal of persons tainted by Nazism from public service, the economy, science, and culture, as well as the criminal prosecution of Nazi and war crimes.
Consolidating Dictatorship
There was no independent judiciary under the Stalinist regime of the Soviet Union. Arrests, convictions, and punishment were carried out by security agencies—the very same agencies tasked with enforcing occupation rule, overseeing denazification, and consolidating control in the Soviet zone. These included the Soviet secret service, an agency of the People’s Commissariat (renamed Ministry in 1946) for Internal Affairs, the Soviet secret police, part of the People’s Commissariat (Ministry) for State Security, and the military counterintelligence agency known as SMERSH. In addition, German police and security forces also carried out arrests and in certain cases handed the detainees over to the occupation authorities. Anyone present in the Soviet zone was subject to such repression. People were also abducted from West Berlin and the Western Allied zones.Order No. 00315 established the framework for creating Soviet Speziallager (special camps). Until these camps were dissolved in early 1950, this order formed the basis for all internments in the Soviet zone and in the months following East Germany's founding. It also identified broadly defined groups of people to be interned, and it gave Soviet security agencies wide-ranging discretionary powers. Not only Nazi criminals were arrested, but also people who supposedly opposed the Soviet occupation or who were part of the democratic resistance in the Soviet zone. Even belonging to an allegedly hostile group or nationality represented sufficient grounds for detention and conviction. Employees of the Soviet security agencies themselves were also among those taken into custody.Soviet Criminal Code of 1926, 1950 editionOnly about ten percent of the defendants brought before the Soviet military tribunals were convicted on the basis of Allied denazification laws. By contrast, over 70 percent were convicted under Article 58 of the Soviet Criminal Code of 1926. The 14 subsections of Article 58 were formulated so broadly that virtually any behavior could be interpreted as a criminal act. Article 58 was a key instrument of Stalinist terror in the Soviet Union and, after 1945, for consolidating dictatorial rule in the Soviet zone and the young East Germany.
Soviet Personnel at the Lindenstrasse Detention and Tribunal Site
Employees of the Soviet security agencies were often referred to as Chekists. This term comes from "Cheka," the name of the Soviet secret police organization founded in 1917 during the course of Russia's October Revolution. Next to the Red Army, it was the second pillar of power for securing the outcome of the Russian revolution. Its task was to combat counterrevolutionary movements and eliminate all opposition. During the Second World War, it followed behind advancing Red Army combat troops to secure the liberated territories and capture, or immediately liquidate, "enemy elements" – including spies, agents, saboteurs, terrorists, members of various enemy organizations and groups of bandits, as well as insurgents. The Cheka regarded persecution, denunciation, internment, and killing as necessary and legitimate means of "class struggle." Most of its members had switched from military careers to intelligence work. They were characterized by soldierly virtues such as unconditional readiness, toughness, determination, obedience and self-sacrifice.Apart from the security guards, the staff at the Soviet detention and tribunal site on Lindenstrasse primarily included members of the investigations department of the Soviet secret service as well as interpreters, including numerous women. The judges on the military tribunals were Army personnel. The historical sources here are sparse, so very little is known about these individuals.Stepan Ivanovitsch Filatov (1901–1980) Степан Иванович Филатов 1946–1950 Head of the NKVD/MGB Brandenburg Operational SectorStepan I. Filatov was born in October 1901 in Svishni, a small community in southwestern Russia. In the fall of 1919, during the Russian Civil War, he served in the Red Army for several months. After his release, he worked in agriculture before completing a course in education at a technical college. He was actively involved in the Communist Party's youth organization, among other things as head of political education. In April 1925, he switched to full-time employment with the Soviet secret police (GPU) in the district of Yelets, not far from his hometown. One year later, he joined the Communist Party. With the incorporation of the GPU into the newly formed People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) in 1934, Filatov began a rapid rise through the ranks. In 1940, he was named deputy head of an NKVD regional administration near the Soviet-Chinese border. In September 1944, Filatov was transferred for a special mission to Tartu, Estonia, immediately following the Red Army's recapture of the city from the Germans. He then served as deputy head of the NKGB (state security) in the Molotov region of the Urals, a post which he held until February 1946. In March of 1946, Filatov was sent to Germany, where he served until 1950 as head of the NKVD/MGB Brandenburg Operational Sector in Potsdam. His work here included interrogating detainees held in Lindenstrasse prison and in the Villa Ingenheim. After his return to the Soviet Union, he held the office of Deputy Minister of State Security starting in 1951. In March 1953, just days after the death of Joseph Stalin, he resigned from this office. He left Moscow and was transferred to Kazan, and later still further east to the Urals. In the summer of 1954, he retired at the age of 53. Stepan I. Filatov died in Moscow in 1980.Konstantin Terentyevich Pimenov (1911–1978) Константин Терентьевич Пименов 1945–1946 Head of the Potsdam Operational Group and head of Lindenstrasse prisonKonstantin T. Pimenov was born in 1911 in Feodosia, Crimea. During the Russian Civil War, his father was killed by opponents of the Bolsheviks. After completing school, Pimenov first took on jobs as a loading worker, mechanic, and chauffeur. In 1932, he moved to Leningrad to study and joined the Communist Party that same year. After attending a civilian college for one year, he transferred to the Air Force Military-Technical College in Leningrad and later to the Military Academy of the Red Army in Moscow, the highest military training academy of the Soviet Union. In the spring of 1939, he joined the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). There he was active in various military units during World War II as head of the Special Department and the SMERSH counterintelligence agency. In 1943, he was transferred out for disciplinary violations – he is said to have drunk and had sexual intercourse with subordinates. At the end of the war, Pimenov was sent to Brandenburg. In July 1945, he became head of the Potsdam Operational Group of the Soviet secret service, the NKVD. In this position, which he held until December 1946, he was also in charge of the Lindenstrasse detention prison. He signed numerous lists containing the names of hundreds of internees and convicts who were to be transferred from Lindenstrasse prison to Soviet special camps. He subsequently held senior positions in the Soviet secret service in the Soviet zone and East Germany until his return to the Soviet Union in 1954. Konstantin T. Pimenov died in 1978 in Moscow.Ivan Ivanovich Sivakov (1917–?) Иван Иванович Сиваков 1946–1950 Head of the investigations department in the NKVD/MGB Operational Sector for the State of BrandenburgIvan Ivanovich Sivakov was born in 1917 to a peasant family in Nikitino near Smolensk, Russia. After leaving school, he attended a technical college for agriculture and then worked at a machine tractor station until 1938. This job ended when he was drafted into the Red Army, where after serving in communications and cavalry units he was made an assistant to a political officer in 1939. He joined the Soviet secret service in November 1940, when he became assistant to the operational officer of the NKVD special department in a rifle division. It was not until 1941 that he joined the Communist Party. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, he worked in various NKVD special departments and in the SMERSH counterintelligence agency. In November 1945, Sivakov was delegated to the staff of the NKVD special representative in the Soviet Occupation Zone. In the Soviet zone, he headed the investigations department in the NKVD/MGB Operational Sector for the State of Brandenburg from April 1946 to October 1950. In this capacity, he conducted numerous investigations and interrogations of German and Soviet nationals. Several former detainees have described him as extremely violent. He also signed several lists documenting transfers from Lindenstrasse prison to Soviet special camps. From April 1949 to October 1950, he headed a department in the MGB's Brandenburg Operational Sector before returning to the Soviet Union. There is no record of his life after this point.Ovakim Sargisovich Sargsyan Оваким Саргисович Саргсян Sargsjan initially worked as head of the services department at the MVD prison in Eberswalde. From 1947 to 1949, he was commander of the Soviet detention prison on Lindenstrasse. There is evidence that he was also the prison's director for a time. During this period, he initialed a large number of lists documenting the transfer of persons from Lindenstrasse prison to Soviet special camps in Torgau, Bautzen, and Sachsenhausen. No further information about his life is available.Vladimir Dmitrievich Svitsky Владимир Дмитриевич Свитский Available records show that Svitsky was commander of the Soviet detention prison on Lindenstrasse from October 1945 to November 1946. Until June 1947, he served as the acting commander of the prison. After this time, he was appointed operational representative of the MGB Operational Sector for the State of Brandenburg. In these roles, he had by September 1948 signed many lists with the names of Lindenstrasse prisoners being transferred to Soviet special camps, such as those in Frankfurt (Oder), Sachsenhausen, and Torgau. His last known function was that of the head of the "RS" (Operational Registry) subdivision in the MGB Operational Sector for the State of Brandenburg.Leonid Nikolayevich Prokuratov Леонид Николаевич Прокуратов In 1948/49, Prokuratov was a member of the investigations department of the MGB Operational Sector for the State of Brandenburg and responsible for conducting numerous investigations targeting German citizens. One of his missions involved investigations and interrogations against the "LO Group" from Frankfurt (Oder). In the resulting joint trials held at the Lindenstrasse site, Helga Wunsch and Jochen Stern were each sentenced by a Soviet military tribunal to 25 years in a labor camp. With his promotion to captain in January 1949, Prokuratov was appointed deputy head of the investigations department of the MGB Operational Sector for the State of Brandenburg. No further information about his life is available.
Memoirs of Soviet imprisonment
With few exceptions, former prisoners did not put their memories of imprisonment to paper until after the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. These published autobiographical reports are an important source for understanding how convictions and sentences came about and what life in prison was like, including at Lindenstrasse prison.Certificate on the rehabilitation of Helga Rist (née Wunsch), 2021It was not until the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1992 that Russia created the legal basis for case-by-case criminal rehabilitation proceedings for those wrongfully convicted. SMT rulings were reviewed by the Main Military Prosecutor's Office within the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation. Having a conviction overturned was a matter of great importance for many victims and their descendants.
