“Instead of reading about it in dry memoirs, our clients have a unique opportunity to spend a night or two in a prison cell themselves,” project manager Michael Heinz says enthusiastically. “We guarantee them poor food, a restless night, and other prison delights.” A night in a cell costs 100 euros. Heinz is confident that for local residents this tourist program is a real gift. First, they will be much more aware of their own sad past – after all, under the communists the prison was a secret facility; and secondly, the influx of tourists will provide the impoverished Saxon town with additional financial revenue. “Maybe someone will start making prison-themed souvenirs,” Heinz hopes.
The former inmates of Hoheneck are, of course, outraged. Margot Jann, a representative of a protest group that seemingly sprang up at once from former prisoners as soon as the tourist appeal of their prison became known, is convinced that “you cannot make money from human suffering.”
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