Exploring the Dark Past: The Hohenschönhausen Memorial

Over the next two days, I'll be sharing images from our visit to The Hohenschönhausen Memorial in eastern Berlin. This lesser-known spot doesn't attract many tourists due to its distance from the city's main attractions. Typically, visitors here are school groups, possibly as part of the high school German curriculum, or individuals with a keen interest in recent German history. Our interest in this place was sparked by "Grand Tour Europe," a book we read by the French writer Olivier Guez, who collected stories about Europe written by different authors with the aim of educating Europeans about their continent. Among these tales is one by Daniel Kehlmann, discussing The Hohenschönhausen Memorial, the former Stasi prison of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Serving as a detention center for political prisoners, it was a site of psychological and physical torture. Our guided tour left us deeply shocked by the atrocities that occurred here, the sinister interrogation techniques employed, and the pervasive surveillance culture of the DDR. It felt like something out of George Orwell's 1984, but far more chilling – Berlin, Germany.