The exhibition presents the history of Brandenburg-Görden prison during National Socialism and in the GDR. It begins with a brief description of the reform prisons of the Weimar Republic and ends with a look at the present day prison system. First, it is shown how the prison system willingly subordinated itself to the political, racial, anti-Semitic and criminal-biological goals of National Socialism. It put into effect ever more radical measures up to and including a policy of annihilation: imprisonment of political opponents and people persecuted for being “antisocial”, worsening prison and working conditions as well as transfers to concentration and extermination camps. During the Second World War a place of execution was located at the prison up in Görden. Then, the exhibition is concerned with the GDR prison system. It served the SED regime also as an instrument of political repression. Physical conditions changed in the prison between 1949 and 1989. Nevertheless, imprisonment meant deprivation and lawlessness, harassment and arbitrariness for those in custody.weiterlesen