Macikai Camp Penal Cell – Museum Museum

The exhibition is located 2 km from Šilutė, on the left bank of the River Šyša, in the village of Macikai, on the grounds of the former manor castle.
From 1939–1944, the prisoner-of-war camp Stalag 1C Heydekrug was established in Macikai, where Polish, Belgian, French, and Russian prisoners of war were imprisoned. When Lithuania was occupied by the Soviets for the second time from 1944–1946, Camp No. 184 was established there to keep German prisoners of war. From 1946 to 1948, the prisoner- of-war camp was transformed into Šilutė (Macikai) Division 3 of the GULAG labour camp, which operated until 1955. After the re-organisation, civilians not wanted by the Soviet occupation government were placed in the camp. The relatively small camp of the labour camp type had all the features of the Soviet era: barracks, a solitary confinement cell and a sanitary unit. It could accommodate 3,000 detainees at a time, and a third of them were Lithuanians. The only remaining part of the former concentration camp buildings is the solitary confinement cell. In 1995, pursuant to the initiative of the Šilutė Association of Deportees and Political Prisoners, a solitary confinement cell of a concentration camp – museum was set up in the former building of the confinement cell of Macikai concentration camp. It houses the Šilutė Hugo Scheu Museum exhibition, which reflects the different periods of history of the camp.