The national exhibitions and the monument in Birkenau

Only in the 1960s were the so-called national exhibitions opened and the monument at the Birkenau site unveiled, although they had been planned before the opening of the Museum. A small monument to the martyrdom of the Jews was unveiled in 1948, and an equally small monument to the victims of the camp in 1955. At the beginning of the 1960s, the boundaries of the Museum were still being demarcated, and the former owners of the ground on which it stood were in the process of being formally dispossessed and compensated.