History of the Bergen-Belsen Memorial
The British military government ordered the creation of an appropriate place of remembrance at the end of September 1945. The plans for the site at the time only included the area around the mass graves and envisaged a cemetery-like site.
Inauguration of the memorial site
An international commission, in which survivors were also represented, was formed. In the summer of 1946, it recommended that an obelisk and an inscription wall be erected. In November 1952, this memorial was inaugurated with an internationally recognised state ceremony. Responsibility for it was transferred to the federal state of Lower Saxony. This makes it the oldest state-run memorial in the Federal Republic of Germany.
During the 1950s, the Bergen-Belsen memorial site was increasingly forgotten. In the wake of a wave of anti-Semitic graffiti at the end of 1959 and the high-profile trials of Adolf Eichmann and the guards at Auschwitz, the past was once again increasingly discussed. In this context, the first academic publication on the history of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp was published. In addition, a house of documents with an exhibition was added to the memorial site with funding from the state and the grounds were remodelled.
Professionalisation of the memorial work
After the opening of the house of documents in 1966, Bergen-Belsen remained a memorial site without scientific staff for a long time. Two decades later, this situation no longer met the requirements for comprehensive remembrance work at the sites of the National Socialist crimes. In 1985, the Lower Saxony state parliament unanimously decided to expand the house of documents and organise on-site visitor support. In April 1990, a new permanent exhibition was opened in the considerably expanded house of documents, which also presented the history of the prisoner-of-war camp for the first time. With the recruitment of scientific staff from 1987, the establishment of seminar rooms and the provision of guided tours, the conditions were created for permanent memorial work.
After several years of worldwide archival research and an extensive expansion of the Collection with testimonies to the history of the site, the memorial opened a Documentation Centre with a permanent exhibition, archive and library in 2007. As part of the exterior design of the former camp, a visitor guidance system was subsequently created to explain the historical sites with information steles and bookmarks.
In 2019, a segment of five historic buildings from the neighbouring barracks was separated. Building M.B. 89 has since been part of the memorial as a learning place. There is also an exhibition on the "Wehrmacht" (German armed forces) on site from the establishment of the military training area to the end of the Second World War in Europe.