I witnessed Spandau Prison, at the time located in West Berlin, during a helicopter tour of the city in 1986. Rudolf Hess was the lone prisoner and unbeknownst to me or anyone else at the time, he had a year to live -- and the demise of the prison would soon follow as well.
After his death, Spandau Prison was demolished as a means to prevent it from becoming a Neo-Nazi shrine. But the West Germans did not stop there. To further ensure its erasure, the site was made into a parking facility and a shopping center, and all materials from the demolished prison were ground to powder and dispersed into the North Sea.
I'm a bit sad -- it was a magnificent structure, even as a prison. Built in 1876, it initially served as a military detention center and later housed civilian inmates. After the Second World War, it was administered by the Allies to house Nazi war criminals after the Nuremberg Trials -- the seven which had escaped the death penalty.
Ultimately, Spandau Prison itself could not escape its association with its Nazi past. Erased.
