The House of Sufferings of the Deportees and Political Prisoners

The exposition of the House of Sufferings of the Deportees and Political Prisoners of Tauragė Santaka Regional Museum is established in the basement of the house at Prezidento g. 38. Tauragė citizens refer to this building as Šubertinė, according to the builder of the house. The three-storey residential house of the joiner Otto Šubertas was built in 1937. Back in the day O. Šubertas was planning to turn the basement into a workshop, while his family lived in the rest of the house. In 1940 Soviet authorities nationalised the building and the owners were forced to move out. In 1941 the family of Šubertai were repatriated to Germany.
In 1940-1941 the Soviet authorities turned the building into an NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) headquarters with a prison-lockup. Political prisoners and post-war partisans used to be imprisoned, interrogated and tortured for their ‘anti-revolutionary crimes’ until 1954. Some of them even died here, being unable to bear the torture.
In 1990, near the former NKVD headquarters the city opened a memorial plate and on 28 November 1993 – a monument in the Courtyard of Suffering for the partisans and political prisoners, tortured and murdered after the war. In 1995 the building was given to Tauragė Department of the Lithuanian Union of Political Prisoners and Deportees, which started accumulating exhibits in the basement. The exposition of the public museum was consecrated on 14 June 1997.
In 2015-2016 the building was renovated and given to a division of Tauragė Regional Museum – the House of Sufferings of the Deportees and Political Prisoners – with a unique renewed exposition. The first floor hosts the exposition in memory of the deportees and political prisoners. The basement features an authentic 1945-1953 prison cell, an interrogation office, a sweatbox, as well as a room for education. The museum features a lot of interactive solutions, which enable to get to know the horrors of NKVD interrogation and the peculiarities of partisan life.

Compiled in 2018