Nachgegraben, 2016, Inkjet print, 24 x 16 cm
A follow up to Gras-drüber-wachsen-lassen, this photograph shows a field of dark gravel covering the ground at the Topographie des Terrors memorial site in Berlin. Beneath this gravel lie the excavated and re-covered remains of the Gestapo’s Hausgefängnis, a house prison where an estimated 15,000 political prisoners were held and tortured between 1933 and 1945.
The site was uncovered during excavations in 1986–87, partly driven by the grassroots Nachgegraben movement, a citizens’ initiative that had campaigned since the early 1980s to force a public reckoning with Berlin’s buried Nazi history. After documentation, the cells were deliberately covered over with gravel, not to erase them, but to preserve them and mark the ground as a memorial.
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