Spandau Prison his time as an admiral, "Ten Years and Twenty Days". Raeder, in failing health and seemingly close to death, was released in 1955 and died in 1960. Rudolf Hess, sentenced to life but not released due to ill health like Raeder, Funk, or Neurath, served the longest sentence out of the seven and was by far the most demanding of the prisoners. Regarded as being the 'laziest man in Spandau', Hess avoided all forms of work that he deemed below his dignity, such as pulling weeds. He was the only one of the seven who almost never attended the prison's
Spandau Prison of Hitler, and journalists such as Egon Kisch and Carl von Ossietzky, were held there in so-called protective custody. Spandau Prison became a sort of predecessor of the Nazi concentration camps. While it was formally operated by the Prussian Ministry of Justice, the Gestapo tortured and abused its inmates, as Egon Erwin Kisch recalls in his memories of Spandau Prison. By the end of 1933 the first Nazi concentration camps had been erected (at Dachau, Osthofen, Oranienburg, Sonnenburg, Lichtenburg and the marshland camps around Esterwegen); all remaining prisoners who had been held in so-called protective custody in state prisons were