Well out of the town and through a desolate area alongside railway sidings, this is a large memorial and cemetery site which the concentration camp dead share with British military and other dead. It has two entrances accordingly, both taking a Gedenktuin form. The brick entrance to the concentration camp part leads into a bricked enclosed pathway, and on the insides of the perimeter wall are ‘the names of the dead’. Beyond this formalised and ordinary entrance lies something different, less orderly, more unkempt, more human. Some graves have surrounds, some the remains of small humble name-stones pushed into the ground. There are dated memorials, a ‘central stone’ brick ziggurat from the 1920s, and an upright pillar commemorating the 1930s Great Trek reenactment.
Very different from this, much closer to the town there is a very sad small cemetery mixed with Gedenktuin characteristics. This was unconsecrated and where unbaptised babies who died were buried. The formal entrance is surrounded by layers of later official nationalist memorialisation; and beyond this is the cemetery, unruly with grasses and flowers in spring and summer.
View Springfontein Main gallery here
View Springfontein Babies gallery here
