Prora Holiday Resort

[Gotthard Heinrici]

Prora Holdiay Resort

The German version of Butlins

[Gotthard Heinrici]

http://web.archive.org/web/200405131...51/print.jhtml

Heres another link to a related story

[Owen]

Ah, didn't Michael Palin go there on his last program of his Eastern Europe series?

[Gotthard Heinrici]

I think that was the last episode!!

[Owen]

GoogleEarth Co-ords.

54°26'44.10"N 13°34'18.52"E

Palin's Travels: Germany, New Europe

Rügen is a pretty, amoeba-shaped island, its beaches always popular, especially during the GDR, and here, on a wooded bay at a place called Prora, the Nazis planned a People's Resort (the language of the National Socialists was uncannily similar to that of the Democratic Socialists who replaced them). It was part of what was known as 'Kraft durch Freude', 'Strength through Joy', a policy of organised leisure which would offer lucky workers a carefully regimented holiday of relaxation and indoctrination.

All Nazi buildings had to be monuments to the thousand-year Reich, and a holiday camp was no exception. Work began in Prora in May 1936, and by the summer of 1939 over 3 miles of five-storey accommodation stretched along the coast, enough rooms to take 20,000 people at a time. But no holidaymakers ever came here. The outbreak of war brought other priorities, and the People's Resort became a hospital for evacuees from the bombing of Hamburg, and a hostel for forced labour squads from all over Nazi-conquered Europe.

Now under federal ownership, there is a museum here, and one or two well-intentioned educational projects, and some talk of a hotel, but its scale is so daunting that, sixty-eight years after it was built, it's still here, a long, dusty-white concrete skeleton between the pine forest and the sand. I walk through it and onto the beach. A few boys are playing football. A crisp, cooling breeze comes off the Baltic.

I look behind me at the wreckage of a dream. A dream of a Europe united by force.

[stevew]

Owen,

Good to see in Google Earth, only previuosly seen it on tv.

steve

[Harry Ree]

The island of Rugen is quite a pleasant holiday venue and we were thinking of having a break there this summer, that or Gers.

There is no reference to the past at Prora in the publicity literature and as I see it its location is not indicated although I know where it lies.

Looking at my research, it appears that Ostseebad, Halbinsel, Ahrewnshoop, Darss and Zingst are popular for holidays in this area.DSDF at one time used to offer holidays inclusive with ferry and accomodation at Ostseebad (Eastseaspa, the Germans referring the the Baltic Sea as the East Sea).However it can be rewarding to arrange it yourself after a search for Ferienhaus (holiday house) or Ferienwohnung (holiday appartment).The latter seem to be in greater availability and it is common to find a house comprising of two or more flats.My experience is that there is a high standard of quality of this type of accomodation in Germany and you will not find shoddy furnishings as you might in the UK.The other point is that the rentals give value for money and that is why a self organised holiday can be so economical in terms of cost.

[Gotthard Heinrici]

Places like that give me an eerie feeling, I must admit.