Bergen Gestapo HQ
At Veiten 3 in central Bergen, Gestapo (SIPO) had its regional headquarters comprising the counties of Hordaland, Sogn and Fjordande. The building was newly built and the only thing that the Germans needed to do was to build four prison cells on the fourth floor. People brought to the headquarter were foremost norwegians suspected of being members of the resistance movement. During so called "sharpened interrogations" prisoners were forced to confess or reveal information required by Gestapo. By the locals the headquarters were simply called the Gestapo house. At least six people died in prison as a result of "sharpened interrogations". The Ulven and Espeland camps were subordinated Bergen Gestapo. The head of Bergen Gestapo was Gerhard Friedrich Flesch, Hans Wilhelm Blomberg and Ernst Weimann. The first two were sentenced to death and executed after the war while Weimann was released in 1953.
Current status: Preserved with musuem (2019).
Address: Veiten 3, 5012 Bergen.
Get there: Walk from central Bergen.
Follow up in books: Höhne, Heinz: The Order of the Death’s Head: The story of Hitler’s SS (1969).
After the war the prison cells were used as storage and the building fell into some kind of oblivion. 70 years later it was decided to set up a museum on the fourth floor which I believe opened in 2020.
Wrongly these headquarters are usually called the headquarters of the Gestapo, although in reality it was the headquarters of the Security Police (SIPO) and the Security Services (SD), where the Gestapo was a subordinate department. The reason for the frequent reference to the Gestapo headquarters is partly because it was they who had contact with the prisoners and conducted both interrogations and torture to force information and confessions. But just as important is that the Gestapo is a name that is largely emotive and has a strong association with the crimes of Nazism. The names of the Security Police and the Security Services are not as emotive and do not have the same association with Nazism. Most countries still have police authorities called Security Police and Security Services without being associated with Nazism.