John Whitley Nicolle. The prison was built from until at which date the first prisoners were incarcerated there. In an additional wing was built to incarcerate 70 additional prisoners. Until the Nazi era, the prison was used primarily as a detention centre for those awaiting sentencing. These NN prisoners were part of a secret hostage program devised by the Nazis as a means of controlling potential resistance in occupied territory. Already by 25 February , the responsibility for prosecuting the Belgian and Dutch NN prisoners had been shifted to the State Prosecutor and Sondergericht in the city of Essen.
With the installation of a guillotine in May , Dortmund Prison became a central place of execution in Nazi Germany for Belgian, French and Dutch NN prisoners, German military deserters, political prisoners of many nationalities, and German civilians convicted of crimes such as petty theft after a bombing raid. His Dortmund record states that he was suffering at the time from pneumonia.
John Nicolle died on 14 February in Dortmund Prison and was buried three days later in Hauptfriedhof cemetery. The death certificate, issued in April , does not list the cause of death, but his widow stated in in her compensation application that her husband died from wounds to his legs caused during an RAF bombing raid on Dortmund.
Dortmund Prison had been damaged severely by bombs as early as , and by the end of the war, 6, people in Dortmund had lost their lives in allied bombing attacks. US troops entered the Dortmund city limits on 7 April and had liberated the city by 13 April.
Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel was sentenced to death at the Nuremberg Trials and hanged in , in part for his signing of the Nacht und Nebel decree. Dortmund Prison is still currently in operation with a capacity for male prisoners.
