The Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site was established in 1965 from the initiative of the surviving prisoners who had joined together in 1955 to form the Comité International de Dachau (CID) and fought for the establishment of a memorial site on the grounds of the former concentration camp. The inauguration of the International Memorial on the Roll-call Square marked the end of the transformation of the former concentration camp into a memorial site. The Bavarian state government and the Comité International de Dachau had previously set up an agreement that defined the joined responsibility for the memorial site.

In 2003, the Bavarian Memorial Foundation became responsible for the memorial sites in Dachau and in Flossenbürg. The declared aim of the foundation is to “preserve and shape the memorials as evidence of the crimes of National Socialism, as sites of remembrance of the victims’ suffering and as sites of learning for future generations; to furthermore support historical research and to contribute to keeping the knowledge of the historical events alive” (Art. 2, paragraph 1. Law of the Memorial Foundation).

Text: Courtesy of www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de