Haidari, in Western Attica, just in the outskirts of Athens, served as the main concentration camp in Greece during the German Occupation (1941-1944), run by the SS/SD. It also functioned as a transit camp for the deportation of political prisoners and Jews, destined for either slave labour sites or concentration and extermination camps. After the war, Haidari became a symbol of resistance during the Occupation while the Jewish aspect of its life sunk into oblivion. Since the late 1940s, the site has been used as an active Greek Army camp. Access to the site was denied for years, even to former inmates. Today, controlled admission to the camp is permitted only for the infamous Block 15, the block of the solitary confinement. In the 1980s, the camp opened to annual commemoration events. Nonetheless, Haidari has so far occupied a marginal position in Greek cultural memory and historiography. In this paper we will present our project which deals with the re-interpretation and re-presentation of Block 15 with digital methods. Our work, funded through the Greek-German Fund for the Future, employs a mixed methodological approach, in which original historical and archival research provides the basis for the design and development of immersive methods towards the re-composition of difficult memory. Through original scenarios based on primary and multimedia archival sources the emerging XR experience will bring back to life the actual endangered monument that is Block 15, as an attempt to reintroduce a historically and politically contested site to heterogeneous audiences, both in situ as well as remotely. Our paper will offer reflections on different layers of mnemonic entanglement between the digital and the analogue. It will expand on the practices of immersion on contested heritage, visitor experience, and will raise questions about the challenges of memory and the methods of addressing difficult pasts in digital environments.
