Thread by @MikeStuchbery_

In Stuttgart's Dorotheen Quartier, close to designer outlets and a Tesla showroom is a grey, non-descript building, that quietly fits in among the new development.

It would have been demolished, but for the work of dedicated Stuttgarters. Through their work, it was saved... /1

In the 1880s, it was an opulent hotel, later a post office. At one point, the German equivalent of the roadside AA was founded there. In the 1920s it became a police station, but throughout it never lost the name it began with - Hotel Silber. /2

Now, it is a museum, a memorial to those who were murdered under police authority during the years of Nazi rule.

From 1933 to 1945, Hotel Silber was the headquarters of the Stuttgart State Secret Police - the Gestapo. /3

Entering the permanent exhibition of the museum upstairs, you are confronted with headlines from the Weimar Republic that question the political allegiances of the police - can they be trusted to deal with extremists? /4

At one stage, the Württemberg political police were headquartered in Hotel Silber, prior to the Nazi ascent to power. Their role was to track all political extremists, fascists & communists alike.

Obviously, their files became very useful to the Gestapo, upon their creation. /5

In the years following 1933, members of the. Württemberg KPD - the communist party - were rounded up and held at Hotel Silber.

Some, such as Ewald Funke, pictured in his mugshot, were sentenced to death. Also pictured here is Funke's death sentence. /6

Other opponents of the regime were simply held temporarily at Hotel Silber. Rudolf Schlichter, the influential 1920s artist, painted 'The Prisoner' after his time there.

Rudolf Steiner, the educational theorist & mystic, was also temporarily detained for Gestapo questioning. /7

Years before his brave acts of resistance with the 'Weiße Rose', Hans Scholl was also detained at Hotel Silber - for membership of an illegal youth organization and suspected homosexual acts. He was freed, but a letter sent to his parents from prison is still there on display. /8

Another significant figure to pass through Hotel Silber was Georg Elser.

He attempted to kill Hitler using a bomb placed at a meeting of Nazi officials at a Munich beer hall in November 1939. He was executed at Dachau shortly before the Nazi defeat. /9

Lilo Hermann was also detained at Hotel Silber for a time. This KPD member provided communists with details of German rearmament she came across in her office work.

Despite being a new, single mother, and despite international fury, she was beheaded in June 1938. /10

Following the November pogrom of 1938, Hotel Silber became a base for tracing and arresting Stuttgart's Jews. Their letters and postcards (some sent in captivity) are on display.

Some managed to escape after being freed, many were murdered during the Final Solution. /11

One of the doors from the Hotel Silber prison has been saved. The interior side of the door is covered in scratched messages from the hundreds kept in there, in a number of languages. /12

Years after the war, Lina Haag, a KPD member and anti-fascist who had been kept in Hotel Silber, described her time in the prison in her book, 'A handful of dust'.

Her recollections feature through the building. /13

"Mußgay, the boss of the Stuttgart Gestapo, picks me up personally. I am brought to Stuttgart in the car. One footstep carries me over a steep spiral staircase into one of the cellar cells of the Gestapo building."

Lina Haag: A handful of dust, 1947

"The cell is a hole. Used to the semi-darkness, I distinguish a stone bench set in the wall. The iron door is smooth. The walls are grainy grooved probably to prevent the scratching of slogans and information."

Lina Haag: A handful of dust 1947

The museum also tells the story of Ella Trautmann. Through everything I've spoken of, she served as stenographer to the Gestapo.

In interviews made shortly before she died in 2012, she nonchalantly describes how she obtained the role, and how she enjoyed working there. /14

Perhaps the most wrenching memorial is outside the hotel. The street is named for Else Josenhans.

Despite being a Protestant convert from Judaism, she was cruelly hanged in the prison cellar on the 9th of April, 1945 - even with the full knowledge that the war was lost. /15

Following the war, former inmates, historians and successive generations fought to have Hotel Silber become a site of remembrance of Nazi police brutality and murder.

It opened in 2013. /16

To learn more about Hotel Silber, visit the website - or, if you're even in Stuttgart, I'd be happy to show you around and explain some of presentations. /17 geschichtsort-hotel-silber.de

Now, more than ever, we need places like Hotel Silber to remind us of how quickly we can fall into a state of terror and brutality.

The people that 'ran' Hotel Silber were not monsters, you're reminded - they simply thought they were doing their job.

That's terrifying. /FIN

PS. One final thing. One internee was swing fan Helmut Baumann. He was imprisoned for listening to the forbidden 'degenerate music'.

In interviews made after the way, he expressed a desire to dance where his cell once stood.

Years after his death, they did just that.