The site after 1945

After the war, the British military authorities used the concentration camp buildings as an internment camp for three years. In 1948, the occupying forces handed the camp over to the city of Hamburg, which set up a prison on the site. At the end of the 1960s, the city established a second prison building on the grounds of the former concentration camp. A monument was set up in 1965 as a memorial, and in 1981, a document building was added. Other parts of the former camp were gradually incorporated into the memorial. When the penal facilities were finally moved, the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial was able to expand into the site of the former prisoners' barracks and open as a centre for exhibitions, international exchanges and historical studies in May 2005.