It is surprising that such a beautiful Art Nouveau tenement house housed the place of torture and murder of the Stalinist regime. ⭐️The Corner House was originally intended to be a residential building with shops, a library and a pharmacy on the ground floor. Eventually, deep inside this building in the heart of Riga, thousands of Latvians were imprisoned, interrogated, tortured and executed until 1991 by the KGB. 😟 We got to know this place thanks to a documentary about Russian oppositionists who survived torture in similar prisons in Russia. Indeed, you can feel this specific atmosphere from the moment you open the small door of the tenement house. The bars, the KGB sign, the officers' box, and the mailbox where people sent inquiries about imprisoned or missing relatives, made requests and - much more sinister - reported people "disloyal" to the Soviets. 'For good morning' detained persons were photographed, their fingerprints were taken and their personal belongings were buried. Then they were sent to the dark cells for three days - a cell without windows, the size of one and a half meters‼ ️ After that time, the prisoners were sent to larger, but unfortunately very crowded cells. The Soviets like to turn up the heating and it was hot all year round. The lights were on day and night, and the small windows, if any, were shaded to prevent prisoners from seeing outside. The beds were metal with no mattresses and the toilet was just a bucket in the corner. For 30 peasants a 5 liter bucket, emptied once a day‼ ️ Originally there were 60 cells, 16 are available. Maybe it's just your imagination, but this place is full of ghosts. When entering the cells, the hair stands up on the body. The smell of damp is ubiquitous. The interrogation room, on the other hand, still smelled of cigarettes. The prisoners had no rights‼ ️

......... "There have been many kinds of torture," explained the guide. From beating your whole body, hitting particularly sensitive body parts, smoking, pulling hair out, to insomnia and continuous questioning for 8-9 consecutive days. "The effectiveness of terror does not lie in the terror itself, but in its mixture" ......................

🤔 Prisoners could go to the yard for about half an hour a day with other prisoners from their own cell. The courtyard is a narrow space between buildings, covered with bars and a fence, which is essentially a cage with a bit of natural sunlight shining through the bars if you were lucky. 'Passing through the courtyard of the building, we entered the garage where the executions took place. Throughout the entire period of the KGB's existence, hundreds of people stood in front of this wall waiting for bullets. The blood from the floor was washed off with water and the bodies were packed on a car and taken to the forest. Yellow stains mark the remaining bullet holes. It is a pity that there is no museum in Poland where time has stood still. After all, all the exhibits are original. Perhaps then, all skeptics and opponents of helping Ukraine would understand that they would never want to find such a place in the hands of a Russian swołoczy ️ It is worth adding that in 2018 Latvia released secret KGB files along with the names of agents 👏 Ticket 10€