Bergen-Belsen Memorial Extension

The Bergen-Belsen Memorial is situated 60 km north-east of Hannover, in the Lüneburg Heath. Located on the grounds of the former P.O.W. (Prisoner of War) and concentration camps, marked graves and monuments hold reminders of the suffering and deaths of its prisoners. A new documentation center illustrates the history of the camp and its victims: a 200m long and, at 18m wide, relatively slender monolithic building. Its extraordinary cubature, the radical limitation to just a few monochrome materials, the lack of any detailed ornamentation as well as the physical presence of the large shape with minimalist recesses and openings merge into a powerful, meaningful piece of architecture. More than 60 years after the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp – after a long phase of suppression and destruction of the memory at the historical site – Bergen-Belsen is with this new extension to take up a firm position in the collective memory of Germany.