Geschichtsort Stadthaus
Geschichtsort Stadthaus stands in Hamburg within the Stadthöfe complex, now a shopping and business district. Its exhibitions and the Seufzergang confront the building’s role in Nazi terror.
From 1933 to 1943, the Stadthaus housed Hamburg’s police headquarters and state and criminal police offices. Those authorities persecuted resistance members, Jews, Sinti and Roma, forced labourers, and other targeted groups. Interrogation rooms and cells witnessed humiliation, torture, forced confessions, and deaths, while police helped organise deportations. Police units prepared here for operations in Poland and the Soviet Union, where they joined mass murder. Air raids during Operation Gomorrah heavily damaged the complex in July 1943, prompting the police relocation.
Inside the Seufzergang, prisoners once moved from cells towards interrogation rooms. Exhibitions trace police crimes and persecuted people’s biographies, with German and English elements throughout. Former prisoners’ accounts accompany the passage, connecting its route with experiences of confinement and abuse.
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