Montelupich Prison

The Montelupich Prison (Więzienie Montelupich) is a historic prison in Kraków, Poland. It was built in the 16th century and converted into part of a military tribunal in the 19th century. It was used by the Gestapo during World War II and has been called "one of the most terrible Nazi prisons in [occupied] Poland". The Gestapo took over the facility from the German Sicherheitspolizei at the end of March 1941. One of the Nazi officials responsible for overseeing the Montelupich Prison was Ludwig Hahn. The prison population during World War II consisted predominantly of ethnically Polish political prisoners and victims of Gestapo street raids in Poland, but it also housed German SS and Security Service (SD) members serving jail terms. Other occupants included British and Soviet spies, parachutists, soldiers who had deserted the Waffen-SS, and convicts of ordinary crimes. Between 1940 and 1944, approximately 50,000 prisoners either passed through Montelupich or died in it. Kurkiewiczowa states that the interrogation methods employed by the Germans were equivalent to "medieval tortures". Although the inscription on the plaque by the side door of the prison in the attached 1939 photograph (Fig. 1) reads, "Sicherheits-Polizei-Gefängnis Montelupich", the name "Montelupich Prison" is informal, having been accepted into history only because of popular usage. The Montelupich faci

Prison data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).