Banners, posters and graffiti denouncing the dictatorship. Artillery shells turned into sculptures. Implements of torture. Even an entire prison.

As Syria emerges from a painful chapter in its recent history, some in the country are fervently trying to preserve the remnants of an anti-government uprising that morphed into a civil war and lasted almost 14 years. The hope is that these will serve not only as reminders of what opponents did to fight a brutal regime, and the price they paid, but as a cautionary tale.

Others are rushing to salvage troves of documents, hard drives and computers from the ousted government, items they hope will aid in bringing a measure of justice and accountability.

“You might say we need to forget these scenes. But I don’t want to forget,” said Mutassim Abdulsatir, a 45-year-old who was detained at Syria’s most notorious prison, Sednaya. “These must become a remembrance for days to come so they are not repeated, not in Syria, and not in any country in the world.”

On a recent day outside Sednaya prison, where untold numbers of inmates were summarily executed, Mr. Abdulsatir was collecting nooses from ropes intertwined like clumps of hair. He then dragged them inside the prison, with its sprawling wings and dank dungeons, for safekeeping, imagining them displayed in a glass case.