The Bautzen Prison Memorials

Mielke’s private jail, a detention center or a Stasi prison, – Bautzen II prison went by many names in the GDR era. Today, it is a memorial site. It is there to remind us of the victims of both Bautzen prison institutions, Bautzen I, the so-called Yellow Misery and Bautzen II.

The thematic focus of the Bautzen Prison Memorial is:

• The history of both Bautzen Prisons in National Socialism from 1933 to 1945
• Bautzen I as a Soviet special camp from 1945 to 1956
• The Stasi prison Bautzen II 1956 to 1989

In the former prison, the historical and political background of the respective periods of persecution, as well as individual instances of imprisonment are documented for the visitor.

In addition to exhibitions and regular guided tours, readings, lectures, talks and film screenings are held. The memorial was founded in 1993 on the initiative of the Bautzen Committee, an organisation of former political prisoners of the Bautzen prisons. Today, the Prison Memorial is administered under the umbrella of the Saxon Memorials Foundation.

On the “Karnickelberg”, located in Talstrasse, directly next to Bautzen Prison, many of the prisoners, who died in the special camp in the years 1945–1949, were buried.

Here, the City of Bautzen, with the support of the federal government and the Saxon State, and in cooperation with the Bautzen Committee and the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, created a memorial cemetry for the victims of communist tyranny in Bautzen prisons.

Under difficult conditions, from 1992 to 1994, some of the bodies of the special camp victims, which were hitherto buried in unknown places, were recovered. In September 2000, a memorial chapel was inaugurated in the immediate vicinity of the burial ground.

Since 2013, a memorial path, which runs along the moat where the deceased were originally buried, leads to a place of remembrance for the victims. Thanks to the generous donation of the entrepreneur Prof. Dr. Reinfried Pohl, who lost his father in Bautzen, the long-cherished wish of the survivors and relatives of the victims for a place of remembrance was realized.

The figure “Reconciliation” of the Dresden sculptor Alexander Preißler welcomes the visitors and symbolizes the wish of the donor that this place stand for forgiveness but not forgetting.