The terraced park
A small green space around the tower.
A.Savin โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท DXR โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท Lukas Beck โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Geoprofi Lars โ CC BY-SA 4.0
They were improvised detention sites created by Nazi paramilitary units in the first months after Hitler took power, before the camp system was formally organised. Cellars, bars, warehouses and abandoned factories were used to hold and torture political opponents outside any legal framework. Berlin alone had dozens, and most were only documented much later.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet โ be the first.
The Prenzlauer Berg water tower is Berlin's oldest, built in 1877 of red brick on a small rise, and it is today the district's landmark, which locals simply call the fat fellow. A small terraced public park surrounds it, and the tower and its outbuildings have been converted into apartments. But the building carries a dark history its calm appearance gives no sign of: in 1933, immediately after the Nazis took power, SA units used the cellars and machine spaces beneath the tower as one of the first improvised concentration camps in Berlin. Political opponents were held here โ communists, socialists and trade unionists โ and a number were tortured, some killed. A memorial plaque at the tower explains this today. The place itself takes no more than twenty minutes, but it sits in the heart of Prenzlauer Berg โ one of Berlin's finest residential districts, with its cobbled streets and nineteenth-century buildings โ so you reach it naturally on a walk through the quarter.
A small green space around the tower.
Cobbled streets and 19th-century buildings.
Knaackstrasse 23, 10405 Berlin