EL-DE Haus

This is Cologne's gloomier place: from 1935 to 1945, it was the home of the Cologne Gestapo. Many people were imprisoned, tortured and killed here, and in the months before the end of World War II, the Gestapo had a premonition that the good times would not last, and executed hundreds of innocent people in the inner courtyard of the building. Since 1988, the Aird Building has been the Cologne Archives Center. You can go in for a visit and experience the brutality of the past. The basement of the Eld building is the secret prison of the Gestapo. The 10 cells are still the same as they were in the past. There are as many as 1,800 texts/paragraphs engraved on the walls of the underground cells. The text is a heart-wrenching account of the physical and mental torment, hope, and longing that prisoners endure here.