An island in the Baltic sea once home to a sprawling Nazi complex is now being converted into a picturesque vacation spot.
The Nazi regime planned for it to be a huge vacation destination — where up to 20,000 working class Germans could relax — and invested heavily in “Prora” before putting construction on hold in 1939, the Wall Street Journal reports. Now, that plan for a vacation spot is back in a new form, and of course under new leadership.
A developer is investing in the dilapidated complex to erect hotels and apartments in the hopes that it will attract thousands and foster a vibrant vacation hub.
“I am happy to see that this building is being made into nice vacation apartments. It was always ruins,” Berlin writer Christa Moog told WSJ. “The buildings were built in a dark, bad time. Now they are being transformed.”
With rising real estate prices in Germany this isn’t the only Nazi structure being converted for commercial use, sparking the debate over whether the buildings are worth historical preservation or should be retrofitted for better use.
Do you preserve historical structures even from the Nazis?
The Nazis planned to use the island of Rügen and it’s vacation paradise as a tool to manipulate the German people as part of their “Strength through Joy” program. They began construction in 1936 on the project which would have included a cinema, a festival hall and swimming pools. But the spending was put on hold when war preparations took priority.
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