Documentation and Information Centre (DIZ) Torgau

With its two military prisons Fort Zinna and Brückenkopf and the Reich Military Court, which was moved from Berlin to Torgau in August of 1943, Torgau became the hub of the Wehrmacht penal system during the Second World War. After the end of the war the NKVD, the Soviet secret police, established Special Camps No. 8 and No. 10 at Fort Zinna and the nearby Seydlitz Barracks. Germans were interned in Camp No. 8. German and Soviet citizens who had been convicted by Soviet military tribunals were imprisoned in Camp No. 10. The East German People's Police used the prison at Fort Zinna as a penal institution from 1950 to 1990. In the 1950s and 1960s, the facility was used especially for political prisoners. Until 1975, juvenile offenders were also imprisoned in Torgau.

DIZ Torgau was established as an organisation in 1991 for the purpose of documenting the history of the Torgau prisons during National Socialism, the Soviet occupation and the period of the German Democratic Republic. Today DIZ Torgau is part of the Saxon Memorial Foundation dedicated to the memory of the victims of political dictatorship.

The central prison site – Torgau-Fort Zinna – is now in use as a correctional institution of the Free State of Saxony. Therefore, DIZ Torgau and its exhibition is not located there but in Hartenfels Castle.

Documentation and Information Centre (DIZ) Torgau
Schloss Hartenfels
Schlossstr. 27
04860 Torgau

Tel.: +49 (0) 34 21 - 71 34 68
Fax: +49 (0) 34 21 - 71 49 32
email: diz.torgau@stsg.smwk.sachsen.de