Hitler’s holiday camp for NAZIS reopens as controversial luxury tourist resort
HOTEL Prora has just opened its doors in Germany but can’t close off its dark and twisted past.
Prora is a Nazi holiday camp turned luxury apartment complex
The mega-resort sits on the seaside of Rugen Island, comprising eight identical buildings that stretch along three miles of idyllic beach.
With one of Germany’s finest shorelines, the hotel is prime property, but the view’s not the only feature turning heads.
The concrete structure was built by Adolf Hitler in 1936, as a holiday camp for 20,000 Nazi workers.
It was to be the Baltic Butlins of the Third Reich but plans were abandoned in 1939 when World War II broke out.
The eight-building structure sprawls along 3 miles of beach on Rugen Island
Nazi beach resort ruin transforms into luxury playground
For decades the ghost-like property remained untouched until Prora Solitaire developers began transforming it on to a modern-day apartment complex.
The eight stark buildings have undergone some drastic changes since they were first built.
Four of them have been transformed into luxury apartments and although only one building has opened so far, 95 per cent of the occupancies have already been sold.
Buyers have spent between £297,857 to £553,163 for a penthouse with a sea view.
The buildings were built as a Nazi holiday camp by Hitler but the work was abandoned in WWII
Another building was transformed into a youth hostel and two others were bought by a Liechtenstein company.
The last remaining building was blown up by the Soviet army, which originally intended to blow up the whole thing but ran out of dynamite.
It’s a far cry from the 10,000-room holiday camp that Hitler had planned.
Third Reich workers would have received indoctrination sessions in Nazi ideology through the Kraft durch Freude - Strength through Joy - programme.
Prora before it was transformed into a luxury apartment complex
Witness accounts indicated between 500 to 600 forced labourers were put to work on Prora’s original construction.
The Chief Historian at one of the site’s private museums doesn’t think the controversial past can be forgotten.
Katja Lucke said: “This is a place where 20,000 people were to be groomed to work and wage war.”
Completion for all apartments is set for 2022, with the first grand opening this October.
The site has featured in Relics of the Reich by Colin Philpott, a book released this year to mark 71 years since Hitler took his own life.