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Ministry of State Security (MfS) prison hospital
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Prison Hospital: External view, 1994.
Until 1990, the Genslerstrasse remand prison site also contained the Ministry of State Security (MfS) prison hospital. The original building was single storied, containing the laundry and garages serving the neighbouring canteen and food store. Towards the end of the 1940s, the central Soviet administration for detention and transit camps in Germany moved their administrative offices into this building. In the 1950s, the building was extended and converted into a hospital. While working on the final extension to the building in 1972, three enclosed exercise cells were added to the hospital's eastern wall; the exercise cells were left open to the sky but covered with barbed wire nets - leading the prisoners to call them the "Tiger Cages".
X-Ray room, 2002.
The prison hospital was under the Ministry of State Security's Central Medical Service. The hospital provided out-patient and longer stay treatment for prisoners from all three Berlin remand prisons and at times also treated prisoners from the regional MfS remand prisons. The hospital had up to 28 beds in total; these were, of course, in cells because despite the fact that they were ill, they were prisoners and still needed to be locked up. The other facilities included an X-ray ward, treatment and operating rooms, a laboratory and a morgue. In 1989, the hospital was run by Dr. Herbert Vogel with 28 full-time MfS staff.
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