Gedenkstätte Bautzen

The Gedenkstätte Bautzen stands in the city of Bautzen in Saxony, housed since 1993 in the former special prison Bautzen II, once run by the Stasi. It remembers victims of two prisons, Bautzen I and Bautzen II, across three periods of dictatorship. The site is run by the Foundation of Saxon Memorial Sites for the Victims of Political Persecution. The memorial owes its existence to former prisoners who founded the Bautzen Committee in 1990. In 1991 the Saxon parliament asked for a place to remember victims of communism and socialism, and in 1994 the foundation took charge of building the Gedenkstätte. Today it documents the history of both prisons under the Nazis, Soviet rule and the SED regime. Silke Klewin has led the site since 1999. Visitors find three permanent exhibition rooms tracing the chronology of both prisons from 1904 to 2000. A room devoted to the Soviet special camp shows 42 biographies, original objects and a model of the camp. The Stasi prison section has eight themes, glass steles with biographies and film recordings of show trials. A reconstruction of a cell can be entered.