Inside of Plotzensee Prison, was an execution chamber in which thousands of people were
executed inside of.
This prison was a place where a guillotine and also a hanging beam was found and inside
of here executioners could take the lives of victims in seconds.
They would on the guillotine be able to carry an execution out in as short a time as 7 seconds.
But inside of Plotzensee, the executioners would also carry out the will of Adolf Hitler,
as they were ordered in the wake of the 20th July plot to execute the condemned slowly
in a very painful way.
These were executed using piano wire, and it was said that the deaths were filmed so
that Hitler could watch them back and see his justice being administered.
However what is the story of the guillotine of the prison that executed 3000 enemies of
Hitler?
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Plotzensee Prison as a site was founded under King William I and was built upon Plotzensee
manor, but as time went on it expanded and grew to hold many more prisoners.
Up to 1400 prisoners lived on the site, and today it is still a place where people are
incarcerated.
The executions that occurred at Plotzensee date back to before the Second World War,
where an executioner would take the lives of murderers using an axe almost like an old
medieval style execution.
But Plotzensee would be one of 11 central execution sites established by Hitler in 1936,
and there was an executioner based there who would carry out the number of death sentences
which were going up.
As mentioned inside the execution chamber which was found in the courtyard was a hanging
beam, but also a guillotine or a fallbeil, a metal guillotine which was adapted from
the French style guillotine.
The fallbeil was a device which was modified from the French device, and it was firstly
made from metal and many of these were permanent sites inside of the prisons which were bolted
down.
Hitler would want a quick and efficient method of executing his enemies and he settled on
the device to do this.
During the Nazi regime, 2891 people were convicted by the notorious Nazi people’s court, and
were executed in Plotzensee.
A guillotine was brought in to the prison from 1937 to replace execution by axe as Hitler
deemed it was too barbaric and he did not want his Nazi regime to be seen as backwards
and medieval.
What was shocking is that at the time, the families of those who were executed and awaiting
their death were forced to pay 1.5 reichsmarks each day for the victim and they also had
to pay an execution charge of 300 reichsmarks.
Executioners received an annual salary of 3000 Reichsmarks and a special bonus of 60
marks for each execution, and the executioner of Plotzensee Roettger to begin with arrived
at the prison twice a week to carry out his work in the early evenings.
Guillotinings could be carried out at three minute intervals and the prisoner would be
fetched from their prison cells to then walk into the courtyard.
A prisoner would be led into the chamber, by the executioner’s assistant, and he would
secure the victims hands and legs before they were tied to a wooden board.
This was then slid under the guillotine and within seconds the executioner would release
the guillotine blade and the condemned would lose their heads.
Following the executions the bodies were released to Hermann Stieve who was an anatomist at
the medical college of the university.
He and his students would then dissect them for research purposes, and even executed women
were sent there.
An allied bombing raid would destroy part of the cell block and also the guillotine,
and it would put this beyond use and other methods were used to execute.
But some of the most high profile executions using the guillotine saw resistance fighters
and those who opposed the Nazis led to the metal device.
Hellmuth Hübener was considered the youngest person executed who was convicted of resistance
to Nazism and was sentenced to death by the People’s Court.
He was just 17 when he went to his death inside the execution chamber and he was influenced
by banned foreign media and he would make leaflets that would be distributed to convince
younger people to avoid the Hitler Youth and to also oppose hitler.
Hubener was arrested by the Gestapo, and he was despite being 17 tried as an adult.
His lawyers and mother and also the Berlin Gestapo would appeal for clemency for the
young teenager, however this was not shown.
The death sentence he was given was upheld, and he was told he would die on the day of
his execution at 1:05pm.
Later on the 27th October at 8:13pm he was executed by the guillotine inside the execution
room at Plotzensee, and within seconds of entering the chamber he lost his head.
Eva Marie Buch was also just a young woman of 22 when she was executed on the guillotine.
She had become a member of the Red Orchestra Resistance group and Buch was charged and
was brought to trial.
She had written articles calling for slave labourers to rise up in the munition factories,
and because of this she was found guilty and was then executed on the 5th August 1943 on
the guillotine inside of Plotzensee.
Maurice Bavaud was a man who tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
He would purchase a pistol who and he intended to shoot Hitler as he passed during a parade.
His attempt was abandoned when Hitler was marching in a company of other leaders who
Bauvard did not want to injure.
He would also travel to Berchtesgaden to try and carry out his plot, but this never took
place.
He was tried by the People’s court and he was declared to have acted alone in his assassination
attempt, but there was an offer made to swap him for other prisoners but this was turned
down and he was then guillotined inside of Plotzensee.
There were many other guillotines which were used across Germany to carry out the will
of Adolf Hitler.
Some were used by skilled executioners who could take the life of someone just seconds
after they passed into their possession.
Plotzensee became known as ‘The House of the Dead,’ and the reputation of the site
inside of the courtyard was known all over Germany.
But the guillotine or fallbeil of Plotzensee Prison was known to have been a brutal execution
device where thousands lost their lives.
It was a terrifying way to go and was a device which was stolen from the French and modified
to be more efficient.
It was brutal justice as prisoners made their ways into the execution chamber, and anyone
who would oppose Hitler or the Nazi regime was subjected to this form of execution.
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