Bautzen II

In 1950, the East German interior ministry took over two prisons in Bautzen and began calling them Bautzen I and Bautzen II. Bautzen I had previously been used by both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to imprison critics of the regime while Bautzen II had been used only by the Soviet Union. In 1956, the East german ministry of security (Ministerium fuer Staatssicherheit, a national security ministry, MfS) decided to transform Bautzen II into a special prison for critics of the regime. To hide that it was MfS who controlled the prison, it was officially under the interior ministry. When East Germany collapsed in the autumn of 1989, all prisoners were released and in 1990 it was handed over to the Saxon ministry of justice. In 1992 the prison was closed and since 1994 it is a museum.