NS-Documentation Center

Throughout Europe, more than 70,000 of them pave paths and squares, in Cologne 2,399 – as of August 2020 – we are speaking of Stolpersteine. Initially laid in 1995 without official permission, from the year 2000 onward they were laid with governmental approval, as time dictated. On March 17, 2022, the last of these stones was laid in Cologne for the time being. In the future, the 10 x 10 cm concrete cubes with brass plaques will be commissioned anew whenever an individual or a group takes on a paid sponsorship.

Each Stolperstein, placed in front of the last freely chosen residence of a person displaced by the Nazis, serves as a reminder of their fate through deportation, persecution, and murder during the Third Reich. A completely viewable list of all stones is provided by the NS Documentation Center, which is worth visiting – it also offers its extensive processing of NS history for remembrance and against forgetting in a multimedia format over multiple floors at the former Gestapo prison of the city.

NS Documentation Center in the EL-DE House, in the former Gestapo Headquarters

The museum, which simultaneously serves as a memorial and research facility, comprehensively addresses the recent history of Cologne, as it was deeply fractured by the Holocaust – about half of the 16,000 Jewish residents here in 1925 did not survive the Nazi regime. One of the central tasks of the NS Documentation Center is to commemorate these Jewish victims of the Third Reich in the city of Cologne – and for this purpose, the EL-DE House at Appellhofplatz was deliberately chosen, which from 1933-1945 was the seat of the Cologne Gestapo with its own house prison. The Gestapo cells found here in March 1979, which were restored for viewing, prompted the opening of the NS Documentation Center at this location in 1987. Today, the NS Documentation Center is considered the largest local memorial for the victims of National Socialism in the entire republic.

Permanent Exhibition, Special Exhibitions, Media Stations: intense impressions that require time…

As a major local memorial, the center enlightens in a comprehensive and impressively painful way about one of the saddest chapters of German history in a German metropolis.

The former Gestapo prison in the basement forms the centerpiece of the exhibition and your visit. With its preserved cells, whose walls tell the story of the detainees through more than 1,800 inscriptions, it offers an intense historical access. Since 2013, the courtyard, the former execution site, is also accessible to you.

Additionally, in the permanent exhibition, you learn more about the basics of the NS system in the city of Cologne. Regularly, free guided tours and workshops take place – for school classes and groups, but also for individuals. Audioguides are available in many languages.

Numerous changing special exhibitions and the more than 30 media stations installed in 2009 around the history of National Socialism in Cologne provide you with a profound impression for which you should take your time.

NS Documentation Center as a Research Institution

The research department of the center works on reconstructing the archival materials destroyed during the war and at the end of the war and offers a specialized library for those interested. Additionally, the center houses the Info and Education Center against Right-Wing Extremism, which is active with a diverse range of democratic education and consulting services.

Educational Offerings: modern pedagogical concepts for the promotion of democracy

With the concept "House for Remembrance and Democracy," the NS Documentation Center was expanded to include the top two floors as part of an educational offensive with a resolution from 2017. The third and fourth floors added 1,380 square meters, so that the center now has a total of 4,230 square meters. Here, it is about modern offerings for the promotion of democracy. In a designed play situation, self-directed and active learning, especially for young people, is at the center when it comes to solving societal problems and questions together as a group.