Featured Image Credit: Alamy/Netflix
Topics: Stranger Things, World News
Aisha Nozari
Some of Stranger Things season four’s most epic scenes took place in Russia, where Hopper was imprisoned in a grim, high-security jail that was the definition of not fun.
But believe it or not, no filming actually took place in Russia. Hopper’s prison scenes were actually filmed on location at Lukiškės Prison in Vilnius, Lithuania, a detention centre with a famously dark history.
Although the jail closed in 2019 and is now one of Vilnius’ buzziest cultural hubs, it was once used by the Nazis and inmates were subjected to brutal regimes of torture on the site.
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Hundreds of Jewish and Polish prisoners were held captive at Lukiškės during WWII and the complex’s very first inmates were detained behind its walls as early as 1904.
According to The Sun, Lukiškės was considered a ‘contemporary prison’ when it was built and contained a detention centre for 278 prisoners, cells for 421 inmates, a bakery, kitchen, office and ice cellar.
Nearby residents would often complain about hearing the screams of inmates as they were physically and mentally abused.
The Gestapo also imprisoned thousands of Jewish and Polish people at the facility during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, and Soviet Union agents were involved in the ‘mass murder of prisoners at Lukiškės’.
Prisoners were taken to the nearby Ponary railway station where 70,000 Jewish people, 20,000 Polish, and 10,000 Soviet prisoners of war were shot between 1941 and 1944.
What’s more, most Lukiškės inmates had no chance of being released, driving some to suicide.
Up to four people would be cramped inside holding cells that measured four square feet and certain prisoners would be kept in dark cells for 23 hours at a time.
For one hour every day they would be allowed to enter a roofless room where they could look at the sky.
Only one hot shower a week was allowed and inmates would be served bland dishes of salty water and pieces of potatoes - known as ‘prisoners soup’.
At Lukiškės, psychological torture was commonplace and inmates handed death sentences would be shot next to their cells or hanged in the yard.
Prisoners were also forbidden from exercising and weren’t allowed visitors or contact with the world beyond their cell walls.
What’s more, not a single inmate ever escaped from Lukiškės in the prison’s entire history as the facility was guarded by electrical fences and dogs.
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