On a stretch of white sand beach on an island off Germany, a massive complex intended as a Nazi holiday camp that has been steadily falling into disrepair is set for a new lease of life.
More than 70 years since construction began on the vast Prora complex on the picturesque island of Ruegen, plans are being drawn up to turn one of the imposing dormitory blocks into a 500-bed youth hostel, with every room to have a view of the Baltic Sea.
Prora was built as one of the so-called Strength Through Joy camps set up by the Nazis.
Its masterminds had a vision of bringing up to 20Â 000 Germans at a time to the locale on cruise ships for a holiday intertwined with hearty exercise and ideological teaching that would turn them into the physical specimens Hitler dreamed about.
Robert Ley, a confidante of the Fuehrer, set up the Strength Through Joy movement in 1938 with the aim of making people healthier so they could work to serve the Fatherland.
He believed that trips to camps like Prora would make people more productive.
“If we can get every German there once a year then I believe we can extend people’s working lives from 40 years to 70 years,” Ley said in 1935.
Work on Prora began a year later, with 9Â 000 workers toiling to build eight identical dormitory-style blocks stretching 3km along the beach. The complex was to include a cinema, a theatre, a banquet hall for 25Â 000 people and two swimming pools.
But work was halted by the outbreak of World War II in 1939 and Prora was never used for its original purpose.
When the Soviet army seized control of eastern Germany at the end of the war, the camp was turned to military use.
Since the collapse of communist East Germany in 1989, Prora has sat desolate and largely empty, though its blocks are protected as a landmark of the Third Reich. According to Prora’s official website, it was “the largest architectural project of the time that was actually carried out” and today draws hundreds of thousands of curious each year to visit this “colossus” of National Socialism.
But it has been battered by the winds and slowly disintegrating. A museum and a ragtag art gallery were the only permanent occupants, and the federal government had been trying to sell off the huge blocks since 1992.
Now the German Youth Hostel Association (DJH) has taken over the development of one of the blocks, contributing â,¬1-million to a â,¬12-million project mainly financed by the European Union and German federal and state authorities.
Work is yet to start on the hostel, but its planners are confident it will be ready in 2010, while a camp site is expected to open in Prora soon.
Dirk Hohls, the head of the DJH in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania where Prora is located, believes the new hostel will do brisk business, especially as environmentally minded Germans appear to be turning their back on foreign travel to take their holidays closer to home.
The DJH used one of the blocks as a makeshift hostel in the 1990s and was surprised by its success as it clocked up 69Â 000 overnight stays a year.
“And that was in a standard of accommodation that would be scoffed at today,” Hohls said.
Problems remain, however, in working out how to feed the visitors because Prora’s status as a protected landmark does not allow the construction of mass catering facilities.
“It will be a logistical challenge,” Hohls admitted.
Horst Schaumann, the mayor of the district of Binz where Prora is situated, brushes off concerns that the dark connotations of its past will hang over the camp in its new guise.
“History doesn’t play a role any longer,” he said.
“Something is finally moving with Prora and it’s a wonderful thing.” — AFP