Day of the Fall of the Wall: special tour of former prison
How were refugees from the GDR imprisoned in Cottbus until the fall of the Wall and under what conditions? Anyone interested can find out during a special guided tour of the Cottbus Human Rights Center. To mark the anniversary of the fall of the Wall on November 7 and 9, the center is inviting visitors to take a historical walk through the former detention site. According to the memorial and meeting place, the guided tours will also show otherwise closed areas such as the former solitary and detention cells in the basement of the prison - for example the VEB Pentacon Dresden workshop, where the prisoners worked, and a GDR prisoner transporter.
Most of the prisoners held in Cottbus Prison were refugees from the republic who were lucky enough not to have died at the inner-German border. During the SED regime, a comparatively large number of academics and artists served their time as political prisoners in Cottbus. Typical grounds for imprisonment included passport violations or "anti-state agitation".
On 9 November, the day the Wall came down, former Cottbus prisoner and chairman of the Cottbus Human Rights Center, Dieter Dombrowski, will accompany the tour as a contemporary witness and talk about his experiences.
Dombrowski founded the association Menschenrechtszentrum Cottbus e. V. with fellow campaigners in 2007 to turn the former Cottbus prison into a place of democracy and reappraisal. Since 2015, he has been the federal chairman of the Union of Victims' Associations of Communist Tyranny, the umbrella organization of 40 initiatives for victims of the SED dictatorship.
The Cottbus Human Rights Center offers a unique opportunity for visitors to explore the history of political imprisonment during the GDR era, with a special focus on former detention sites and closed areas like the solitary and detention cells in the basement. On November 9, marked as the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, former Cottbus prisoner and human rights advocate Dieter Dombrowski will lead a memorial tour, sharing his personal experiences and shedding light on the past through the lens of a contemporary witness.
Source: www.dpa.com
