Shell House
In the spring of 1944, Gestapo took over Shell House in Copenhagen and established its headquarters there. The head of the Gestapo in Denmark was SS-Sturmbannführer, Karl Heinz Hoffmann (1913 – 1972). Danish citizens were brought to Shellhuset suspected of having a connection with the Danish resistance movement, like members of Hvidstensgruppen and Holger Danske. There they were interrogated och even tortured to make concessions or confessions. On March 21, 1945, the British Air Force (RAF) carried out a bombing raid on headquarters which heavily damaged it. But the raid also had a bitter aftertaste because a Catholic nursery mistaken for the Shell house was bombed, killing 86 children and 18 adults.
Current status: Rebuilt with monument (2015).
Address: Kampmannsgade, 1604 Köpenhamn.
Get there: Commuter train to Vesterport station.
Follow up in books: Höhne, Heinz: The Order of the Death’s Head: The story of Hitler’s SS (1969).
Shell house was rebuilt after the war, but the Catholic school is no longer there. But a monument has been erected at the site where the names of the dead are engraved in stone slabs on the ground next to the monument.