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Liepaja (December 2004). The twenty most young men and women hold hands on the back and some even embarrassed smile. "Damn," the shaven men in uniform yells at the court before the red brick building. "Have you chicken shit in the head or a brain?" In the former naval prison in Liepaja has just started a new leadership.
For several years, tourists can be arrested there and interrogate - and desire to spend even a night behind bars.
march in single file, visitors, employees of an international company based in Riga, on the terrain. Talk and laughter is forbidden. Those who do not follow the rules holds, is subject to penalties: do 20 push-ups on the parade ground or scrubbing the prison corridor. At the gateway all the guests had signed a statement that they accept the rules and do not mutiny against the treatment.
Authentic treatment for nine €
For the price equivalent to about 9 €, interested parties can even stay where hundred-year castle walls, on request either in a bed and open cell doors or on the floor, with an overnight interrogation, and authentic treatment. Encounters with the spirit prison, of all employees swear that it really give it are free.
to communism was an important base for the Liepaja Soviet Baltic fleet, not only for closed visits by foreigners, but even for Soviet citizens a forbidden city. The district Karosta ("Port War") was dedicated to Russian Navy, it is not even allowed to enter the inhabitants of the third-largest city in Latvia. Since the departure of the Russians threatened the former naval base of the decline.
prison performance is was an immediate success
At a travel fair in 2002 was born the idea to the participants other than a conventional City to show leadership and the former naval prison - and to this for some time behind bars, lock. In this way, all visitors will experience first hand what it means to end up in a Soviet prison cell. "We invited an actor from the city theater," recalls the travel clerk Liiga Engelman, the director of the museum's prison today, "I even played a nurse." Shortly after the jail-Peformance, which should actually be a unique advertising campaign, announced the first travel agencies in town. The organizers were asked to organize other groups a failed prison management.
Meanwhile, the city the construction of angel Manes prison troupe leased, an association for the rescue of Karosta with the Latvian abbreviation KGB. "With the condition that all profits are put into the renovation of the building," says the woman. Sometimes guests complain about poor treatment or about the fact that the suffering of the former prisoners now a business is done. This is the real goal of the project, to remember the dark chapter of recent history.
The army is a dream
gloom stories about the prison in Karosta there are many. After the first Russian Revolution of 1905, the original Hospital converted for the custody of rebellious sailors. During the Nazi era were shot and buried in the backyard of prisoners behind prison walls. In Soviet times, but no one here was executed, but the conditions were inhumane. Instead of beds, it was only nailed together boards. The prisoners were suffering from chronic sleep deprivation. "The army is a dream," a Soviet soldier carved in the black-painted walls, "but God grant that this dream was never to be." Still later, to 1997, took advantage of the Latvian Navy on the prison.
A part of the group is now facing the wall in the cold, dark prison gear. One by one the prisoners pushed to a brief health examination in the hospital room and then photographed with a prisoner number. "What are you doing here in the socialist Latvia? "One of the soldiers said in English to a Dane, who is not on the line. "What did you want on the military base?" In the subsequent interrogation
goes out pretty quickly. "For your behavior you will pay according to the law," hissed the man in uniform, whose face is barely visible. For a desk lamp shines directly into the prisoner's eyes. A stamp slams on the prisoner's file, several years in prison camps expect Convicted. "What am I glad I'm free again," sighs shortly after the Dane with a glass of weak tea and a plate of cabbage soup.
(EPD)
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