Travel Guide "Remembrance Connects Region Oder-Warta"

52 53 The Space of Fat e The Space of Fat e Only a few weeks after the National Socialists seized power, the Nazi regime set up 60 to 100 „early“ concentration camps and more than 30 „protective custody departments“ in prisons and police stations through- out the Reich. were imprisoned in Sonnenburg bet- ween 1942 and 1944 . On the night of 30 - 31 January 1945 , just hours before the Red Army reached Sonnenburg, the remaining 819 prisoners were executed by a 17 -man SS commando squad. The crimes against humanity committed at this site were never systematically and consistently prosecuted. Today, a small museum in the village of Słońsk near the border commemorates the fate of the prisoners of the Sonnenburg penitentiary and concentration camp. Together with the cemetery and its 16 mass graves, Słońsk is now con- sidered a European place of remem- brance and commemoration of this dark period of history. Sonnenburg Museum of Martyrdom The historic prison in Sonnenburg became a place of torture and repression for the Nazi regime in the 1930s. Address: Lutego 54 66 - 436 Słońsk, Polen www.muzeum.slonsk.pl Open: January-December GPS : 52 ° 33 ‘ 50 . 6 “N 14 ° 48 ‘ 41 . 5 “E Sonnenburg Museum of Martyrdom i As a result, the „Royal Penal Institution“ established in Sonnenburg/Neumark in 1836 also became an early concen- tration camp for political opponents, such as communists, social democrats, or trade unionists, including members of the Landtag and Reichstag (German Provincial and Federal Parliaments), along with party functionaries from nearby Berlin. Among the most famous prisoners were Carl von Ossietzky, Hans Litten or Erich Mühsam. In 1941 , Hitler created the basis for the deportation and imprisonment of more than 7 , 000 opposition members throughout Europe with the „Nacht- und-Nebel-Erlass“ (The Night and Fog Decree). Over 1500 of them, from occupied Western Europe and Norway,