The Gestapo Hotel - Hotel Silber
From 1937 to 1945 this former luxury hotel on the Karlsplatz was the Gestapo headquarters for Württemberg and Hohenzollern, where opponents like Eugen Bolz were abused, the deportation of more than 2,600 Jews was organised, and prisoners were hanged days before liberation; today it is a free memorial.
Su questo luogo
Heinrich Silber turned this house into one of Stuttgart's luxury hotels in 1873, and in 1928 the police moved in. After 1933 the political police here served the Nazis without missing a beat, and from 1937 the building was the Gestapo headquarters for Württemberg and Hohenzollern. The last democratic state president, Eugen Bolz, was summoned and mistreated here, Kurt Schumacher and the resistance fighter Lilo Herrmann passed through its cells, and the deportation trains that carried more than 2,600 Jews from the region to the ghettos and death camps were planned at its desks. In April 1945, with French troops days away, the Gestapo hanged prisoners in this house, among them Else Josenhans, a Jewish woman lured into a fake escape by a Gestapo informer, and then burned its files. Decades later the building was slated for demolition to make way for a shopping quarter, until citizens fought for it. Since December 2018 the Hotel Silber has been a free memorial, and words like Mut, courage, and Würde, dignity, now mark its facade above the busy Karlsplatz.
Fatti principali
- 2600 people deported — More than 2,600 Jews from Württemberg and Hohenzollern were deported from Stuttgart's northern station between 1941 and 1945, transports run by the Gestapo office in this building.
- 4 prisoners hanged — Four prisoners were hanged by the Gestapo in this building in April 1945, less than two weeks before French troops entered Stuttgart.
- 2018 year — The memorial Hotel Silber opened in December 2018 after a citizens' campaign saved the building from demolition.