Topography of Terror
It is located on Niederkirchnerstrasse, formerly Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, on the site of buildings, which during the Nazi regime from 1933 to 1945 was the SS Reich Security Main Office, the headquarters of the Sicherheitspolizei, SD, Einsatzgruppen and Gestapo.
The buildings that housed the Gestapo and SS headquarters were largely destroyed by Allied bombing during early 1945 and the ruins demolished after the war.
The site was then turned into a memorial and museum, in the open air but protected from the elements by a canopy, detailing the history of repression under the Nazis.
The new Documentation Centre was officially opened on 6 May 2010 by Federal President Horst Köhler on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II.
Based on the temporary exhibition building, his design was likened to the skeleton of a barracks, allowing light through the glazed gaps in the concrete beams.
The open-air exhibition in the trench alongside the excavated segments of cellar wall on Niederkirchnerstraße (formerly Prinz-Albrecht-Straße) was retained and sheltered with glass.
The room for the permanent exhibition is 800 cubic metres and presents the development and functions of the security apparatuses during the Nazi regime.
In the southern part of the area outside is a copse of black locust trees, the remains of "Harrys Autodrom" from the 1970s, whereas the rest of the open space is covered with greywacke.
In the basement is the seminar centre, the library with about 25,000 volumes, the memorial department and offices for 17 employees of the Topography of Terror Foundation.
Attention to the Nazi regime's many victim groups will assume a central place alongside the portrayal of the system of terror.
With altogether 400 photos and documents, for the first time the exhibition comprehensively related the history of the prison at Prinz-Albrecht-Straße 8 and reminded the fate of numerous detainees.
It outlined the genesis, process, ambition and importance of the trial led by the Allies at Nuremberg focussing on the accused, whose culpability for the war crimes is demonstrated.
The exhibition was developed in cooperation with the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and the Stiftung Neue Synagoge - Centrum Judaicum.
[3] The Topography of Terror Foundation provides comprehensive advice and coordination tasks in the field of national and international memorial sites.
The Documentation Centre on Nazi Forced Labour opened in the summer of 2006 on a part of historical grounds that once belonged to the camp and which are today protected as a monument.
In several Russian cities activists of Memorial have organised alternative tours, showing visitors locations, buildings and monuments associated with the political terror of the Soviet period, especially of Lenin and Stalin.
