London: German dictator Adolf Hitler`s Nazi
holiday resort, which spans nearly three miles along the coast
of the Baltic island of Ruegen, will soon be converted into a
400-bed luxury hotel and 400 apartments, a media report said.
In fact, it`s the Block One of the resort, Colossus
of Prora, which is to be converted into a luxury hotel and an
apartment block. The resort, said to be the largest holiday
camp ever constructed by Hitler in the 1930s, was sold for 2.2
million pounds at an auction in Berlin.
The building, the single-biggest sold in post-war
Germany, had a reserve price of 700,000 pounds, but telephone
bidding at the Berlin auction last Saturday sent the price
soaring, the `Daily Mail` reported.
Prora was constructed on the Baltic island of Ruegen by
the stormtroopers of the Nazi "Strength Through Joy" leisure
organisation over a six-year period and occupies nearly three
miles of beachfront.
It was meant to provide holiday entertainment for 20,000
of Hitler`s hordes at any one time. But not a single Nazi ever
got to stay there. The Nazis viewed leisure as just one more
aspect of human activity to be governed by the party.
The last rooms of the "Butlins-of-the-dark-side" were
finished just as World War Two began in 1939 and Prora was
left empty, the greatest white elephant of all time. It was
occupied after 1945 by the Red Army and became a secret base.
After German reunification, all the buildings were
given listed status and a very few have been transformed into
holiday flats.
PTI
