We associate archaeology with museums about pre-history or about the Romans and Saxons. In museums relating to National Socialism archaeology has taken on a new role.
At former concentration camps, traces were often so thoroughly eradicated that museums have limited material evidence of the buildings and their use. In some cases, the Nazis destroyed evidence; in others, camps were gradually dismantled after the peace. Epidemics made it necessary to burn huts; locals sometimes dismantled huts for firewood as fuel was in short supply; and there was usually little will to preserve camps beyond stone memorials. At Bergen-Belsen, there were many phases of commemoration before the present museum building was opened in 2007, but little trace of original buildings survives.
Camps have begun to conduct archaeological digs to find remaining traces of the people who lived, suffered, and died there. By setting the finds in a series of cases in the ground, the Bergen-Belsen museum indicates their ambiguous status: they are not quite museum objects (they cannot be catalogued as unique or attached clearly to individuals), but they are not rubbish either. Care has been taken to separate them out into categories, with space between them, so that the viewer can see them clearly and reflect on their significance. As is often the case, they include objects that were originally close to the body: shoe leather, buckles, false teeth. And so each object evokes an individual who deserves to be remembered even if no other trace is left of them.
German History Museums 