Memorial SA prison PapestraBe

After the Reichstag elections of 5 March 1933, the SA brutally went after their political opponents. In Berlin the first concentration camps and more than 220 torture sites and improvised prisons were set up. One of these early concentration camps, which existed from March to December 1933, was the SA prison in General Pape Strasse in Schöneberg, originally built in 1900 as a service building for the Prussian railway regiments. The historical research society Geschichtswerkstatt Papestrasse was able to identify the building as the site of the former prison in 1992. The cellar rooms used as prison cells have been preserved in their condition from that time, with inscriptions and dates carved into the walls. Since 2013 there has been an exhibition here documenting the history of the prison.
The SA men interrogated and tortured mainly political dissidents and Jews in this place. The prisoners included Social Democrats, Communists, and trade union representatives and Jewish doctors and lawyers. Up to now, the names of just under 500 people who were imprisoned in Papestrasse in 1933 are known. Some 30 people died as a result of being tortured.