The commemorative markers
The first commemorative markers in the grounds of the former camp were put there by survivors soon after the liberation. They placed personal plaques and memorial stones on the mass graves.
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View over the memorial stones for Margot and Anne Frank to the obelisk and the inscription wall -
Jewish memorial on the grounds of the Bergen Belsen memorial site -
Polish high cross on the grounds of the Bergen Belsen Memorial
History of the commemorative markers
These personal markers were soon joined by large panels erected by the British Army at the entrance to the former camp shortly after the liberation. The panels provided information about the concentration camp in English and German.
In September 1945, Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) erected a provisional wooden monument during the first Congress of Liberated Jews in the British Zone. For most of the Jewish survivors, Bergen-Belsen was a place of mourning which was symbolically connected to their political goals at the time. At the dedication of the first stone monument in the grounds of the former camp on the anniversary of the liberation in April 1946, representatives of the Jewish Central Committee called for the opportunity to emigrate to Palestine and establish a Jewish state.
A Polish camp committee also formed in the DP camp not long after the concentration camp was liberated. One of this committee’s goals was to preserve the memory of the (non-Jewish) Polish prisoners who had been murdered. On 2 November 1945, a wooden high cross was dedicated in the presence of several thousand survivors as well as representatives of the Vatican and the British military government.
In November 1945, the Soviet military mission dedicated a monument to the Soviet victims of the Bergen-Belsen POW camp at the entrance to the POW cemetery. A provisional monument was also erected in the section of the cemetery for Italian military internees in 1945. It was replaced in 1950 by a stone monument with name plaques. This stone monument was removed in 1958 when the bodies of the Italian military internees were reinterred in the main cemetery for Italian victims of the war in Hamburg-Öjendorf.
To this day, personal memorial stones are placed in the grounds of the former camp by relatives of the victims in coordination with the Memorial. These serve as individual sites of mourning, but they have also taken on a wider meaning as places within the Memorial which enable visitors to draw conclusions about the history of the site.