Perhaps the largest and symbolically most resonant Gedenktuin is that at Turfontein, near the then-small town of Irene. It is on a hillside and has a formal brick entrance and covered gateway. Its dedicatory plaque is dated 1962. Cemented into its walls are name stones seemingly from camp graves, but checking the camp registers shows few of which relate to people actually in the camp. Symbolic coffin shapes cascade down the hillside. Within these shapes are deep covered walls which hold the remains of the dead, as well as symbolic railway lines in the shape of crosses leading to these from the entrances into the coffin shapes. In one there is a 1941 memorial in rough-hewn stone which has a dedicatory plaque in a Germanic script, a reflection of nationalist political allegiances at this time. Set into its other sides are ‘the names of the dead’; and at the foot of one side are more of their names.
View Turffontein Gedenktuin gallery here
View Turffontein Names gallery here
