BERLIN – Former political prisoners have voiced outrage at a German company’s scheme to sell tourists an authentic jail experience in what was former Communist East Germany’s biggest women’s prison.
Thousands of women suffered torture and repression behind the walls of Hoheneck castle, a mediaeval fort perched on a hill above the town of Stollberg in Saxony, used as a jail for political dissidents from 1950 until 1989. Now German company Artemis GmbH, which purchased the 12,4-acre estate in 2003, is advertising the chance to spend a night like a prisoner, eating sloppy food and being deprived of sleep in a tiny cell for the price of US$122 (about N$850).”We are offering people the chance to re-live the past first hand instead of just reading about it in dry history books,” said project leader Michael Heinz.”It’s also an opportunity for Stollberg’s inhabitants to come to terms with what happened here,” he said.”During Communist times Hoheneck prison was a black hole in the landscape that no one was supposed to know about.”But former Hoheneck prisoners accuse the business venture of riding rough-shod over their feelings and trying to profit from the misery inflicted by the former Communist dictatorship.”The women who spent years incarcerated at Hoheneck feel absolutely insulted by Artemis’s complete lack of respect,” said Margot Jann from a support group for former Hoheneck prisoners.”It’s clear to us that this project is just a cheap attempt to make money,” she said.Karl Hafen of the International Society for Human Rights in Frankfurt said he had received thousands of telephone calls from furious former captives.”It’s simply unacceptable to turn a prison into a holiday resort,” said Hafen.The society has asked Saxony’s state premier Georg Milbradt to block Artemis’s plan but has got no response yet.The former Hoheneck inmates join the ranks of East Germans enraged by the commercial manipulation of nostalgia for pre-unification days, sparked by hit films such as “Good Bye, Lenin,” retro fashion trends and relaunched East German TV shows.”No one would dream of reconstructing a former Nazi crime scene and marketing it as a historical experience,” said Hafen.”But it seems as far as nostalgia for East Germany’s Communist past is concerned, anything goes.”- Nampa-AFPNow German company Artemis GmbH, which purchased the 12,4-acre estate in 2003, is advertising the chance to spend a night like a prisoner, eating sloppy food and being deprived of sleep in a tiny cell for the price of US$122 (about N$850).”We are offering people the chance to re-live the past first hand instead of just reading about it in dry history books,” said project leader Michael Heinz.”It’s also an opportunity for Stollberg’s inhabitants to come to terms with what happened here,” he said.”During Communist times Hoheneck prison was a black hole in the landscape that no one was supposed to know about.”But former Hoheneck prisoners accuse the business venture of riding rough-shod over their feelings and trying to profit from the misery inflicted by the former Communist dictatorship.”The women who spent years incarcerated at Hoheneck feel absolutely insulted by Artemis’s complete lack of respect,” said Margot Jann from a support group for former Hoheneck prisoners.”It’s clear to us that this project is just a cheap attempt to make money,” she said.Karl Hafen of the International Society for Human Rights in Frankfurt said he had received thousands of telephone calls from furious former captives.”It’s simply unacceptable to turn a prison into a holiday resort,” said Hafen.The society has asked Saxony’s state premier Georg Milbradt to block Artemis’s plan but has got no response yet.The former Hoheneck inmates join the ranks of East Germans enraged by the commercial manipulation of nostalgia for pre-unification days, sparked by hit films such as “Good Bye, Lenin,” retro fashion trends and relaunched East German TV shows.”No one would dream of reconstructing a former Nazi crime scene and marketing it as a historical experience,” said Hafen.”But it seems as far as nostalgia for East Germany’s Communist past is concerned, anything goes.”- Nampa-AFP
Stay informed with The Namibian – your source for credible journalism. Get in-depth reporting and opinions for
only N$85 a month. Invest in journalism, invest in democracy –
Subscribe Now!