NS Documentation Centre of the City of Cologne

In the final months of the war, several hundred people, most of them foreign forced laborers, were murdered in the courtyard of the building.

Since June 1997, the permanent exhibition in the EL-DE building has depicted political, social and community life in "Cologne During the Nazi Era."

Numerous research projects deal with, among other subjects, Jewish history, contemporary witness statements and interviews, forced labor, the police, youth culture, the press, clubs and organizations, various victim groups and commemorative activities, such as the Cologne artist Gunter Demnig's project "Stolpersteine" (Stumbling Blocks).

Among the large, ongoing research undertakings are the history of the Holocaust, resistance, the Gestapo, the Nazi system of Gauleiter (district overseers), urban planning, public health policies and the Hitler Youth movement.

The NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne has been awarded several times: In 2004 Elzbieta Adamski, Employee of the NS Documentation Center of the City of Cologne, received by the hands of the president of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, "for her extraordinary merits in the field of the development of German Polish relations" the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland, one of the most valuable awards of the Polish state.