Special exhibition
from November 22, 2007 to February 13, 2008
Opening hours:
Tuesday to Friday, 10 am – 4 pm
Every first Saturday and Sunday of the month,
1 pm – 5 pm
Admission free
Exhibition venue:
“Roter Ochse” Memorial Site Halle (Saale)
Am Kirchtor 20 b
06108 Halle (Saale)
In 1842 the “Royal Prussian Penal, Learning and Correctional Institution” was opened in Halle. Since the end of the 19th century the name “Roter Ochse” can be proven for the institution.
From 1933 to 1935 the prison served as a prison and protective custody camp, and from 1935 as a penitentiary. Between 1942 and April 1945 over 500 people were executed – Marcel Sutter, from Mulhouse in Alsace, was beheaded here in 1943.
After a few weeks of US occupation, the Soviet occupying power used the prison as a place of detention and internment from July 1945. Thousands of prisoners from all over Saxony-Anhalt were sentenced here by Soviet military tribunals. From 1950 to December 1989, more than 9,000 prisoners were taken to the part of the “Roter Ochse” that was run by the GDR Ministry for State Security (MfS) as a detention center.
Among them were Jehovah’s Witnesses who had already suffered under the Nazi regime and were then brought here again by the Stasi during the GDR era.
The exhibition shows documents of their history using the example of Fritz Adler and Lothar Hörnig.
