Nazism

The permanent exhibition “Topography of Terror: Gestapo, SS and Reich Security Main Office on Wilhelm- and Prinz-Albrecht-Straße” focuses on the central institutions of the SS and police during the “Third Reich” and the crimes that they committed throughout Europe.

The Nazi Forced Labour Documentation Centre, a department of the Topography of Terror Foundation, is continually being developed as an educational site with an exhibitions and archive. The last well-preserved former Nazi forced labor camp is located in Schöneweide. In the Second World War it served as one of the more than 3000 collective accommodations dispersed throughout the city for forced labourers.

The NS-Documentation Center of the City of Cologne is probably the first institution worldwide to offer a 360-degree tour of the Memorial and permanent exhibition, both supported by an audio guide in eight languages. In addition, this ambitious tour offers far more than a simple view into the rooms. Every media station of the exhibition offers a wide range of content through film and audio which is also available online for individuals who cannot visit the exhibition in person.

This museum explores Nazi persecution of Gypsies during Holocaust. It contains the only exhibition about the Sinti and the Roma and the Holocaust in the world. The Nazi genocide of the Roma and Sinti is less well-known than the Holocaust, in part because the Roma and Sinti were more marginalized than Jews before the Nazis came to power because of greater levels of poverty and illiteracy and less organization by Roma and Sinti communities, historians say.