A gigantic Nazi seaside resort on Germany’s Baltic coast in the town of Prora has been turned — after decades of disuse and decay — into one of the country’s largest youth hostels.
Yet initial advertisements highlighting its Nazi past as the “World famous” Strength through Joy (Kraft durch Freude) project caused objections from local historians and led to a marketing U-turn, but not before the German media took notice.
Originally built as the world’s biggest hotel, stretching along 4.5km of one of Germany’s best beaches with 10,000 rooms, it was never used as a holiday resort for the masses in World War II or afterwards although it was used by the military.
As part of the Nazi’s Strength through Joy program, the resort’s aim was to prepare up to 20,000 citizens for war through organized leisure.
The outbreak of World War II put an abrupt end to its construction in 1939, yet even in its incomplete version it was one of the biggest Nazi building projects.
The opening of one of the site’s parts as a youth hostel on Monday has also led extreme right-wing forums on the Web to express their enthusiasm over the event, which attracted widespread media attention in Germany.
“The usage of the term ‘world famous’ in the advertisment is problematic,” said Perke Kuehnel of the Documentation Center Prora, which chronicles the Nazi history of the site.
She said using the term showed a lack of historical sensitivity.
“Everyone involved is aware that the project needs to be handled in a sensible manner,” Jochen Schmidt of the state agency for civic education said, adding that the particular sentence was more a question of detail.
Having just returned from a meeting with the hostel’s management, Schmidt pointed out that the youth hostel was already taking measures. “Colossos of Ruegen” was now exclusively used in the marketing of the site.
In collaboration with the local Prora Center, the hostel is also in the process of setting up a center documenting the site’s Nazi, Soviet and East German past for the public and hostel guests in particular, which is to be open from 2013.
In the meantime the existing choice of tours and exhibitions on offer ensures that all guests have the opportunity to combine leisure with a journey through history.
The idea of a mass tourist resort and the design’s steel-reinforced concrete architecture won it an award at the 1937 Paris world exhibition. The original building plans foresaw a structure of eight housing blocs.
World War II put an end to the Nazi vision however, and building stopped in 1939. The resort was never finished. Today, five building blocs remain usable thanks to the robust design, which have withstood strong sea winds and decades of neglect.
In 1944 and 1945 the building housed refugees fleeing from the advancing Soviet Red Army. After the war the Soviets took over, followed by the East German military.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS