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Commemorative Rooms in the Detention Cells

Commemorative rooms were established in the mid 1950s in the former cells of the so-called "bunker" of the concentration camp for people who were murdered here.

View into the cross corridor of the detention cell building. Individual visitors stand in front of various cells and look inside.
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The prison cell building is open to visitors, 2022. Photo: Lukas Severin Damm. ©Buchenwald Memorial
View into a cell of the detention cell building. The cell is very small. Below a barred and blinded window are picture frames commemorating Edmund Haber, Paul Schneider, and Richard Krasnopior. On the left of the wall hangs a wooden plaque with the engraving: "So now we are ambassadors in Christ's stead, in that God admonishes, as it were, through us; we pray for Christ: be reconciled to God!"
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View into one of the memorial cells of the detention cell building, 2012. Photo: Claus Bach. ©Buchenwald Memorial

The detention building was redesigned in 1974. In the 1990s restoration work was performed, during which historical doors and shutters once used to darken the rooms were put into place. Today, multiple individuals and not just one person are commemorated in each cell.

Among those murdered were:

Stanislaus Cackowski (1914–1941)

Wladyslaw Chodnicki (1919–1941), Polish farm worker

Wenzel Cizek (1886–1942)

Edmund Hamber (1893–1940), "political prisoner" of Jewish origin

Ernst Heilmann (1881–1940), Chairman of the SPD Fraction in the State Parliament

Zygmund Kowalcyk (1913–1940)

Wladyslaw Kulka (1915–1940)

Albert Kuntz (1896–1945), state representative of the German Communist Party (KPD)

Johann Lang (1901–1940), Czech worker

Otto Neururer (1882–1940), Austrian Catholic priest

Nikolaus Obolenski (1892–1940)

Rudolf Opitz (1908–1939), photo lab technician

Paul Schneider (1897–1939), Protestant minister

Julius Silbermann (1905–1938), businessman

Matthias Spanlang (1887–1940), Austrian Catholic priest

Stanislaw Wycisk (1895–1941), "political prisoner" of Polish origin

Michael Zajac (1908–1941)

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