Museum Friedland

The Museum Friedland stands in Friedland, a town in Lower Saxony, on the site of the former Friedland transit camp. The camp opened in 1945 and became a key arrival point for more than four million people: refugees, expellees, released prisoners of war, displaced persons, resettlers and asylum seekers. The museum occupies the 1890 railway station building, once the main entrance to the camp, and a new visitor centre is under construction nearby. The museum’s permanent exhibition, ‘Fluchtpunkt Friedland’, traces the camp’s history from 1945 to today. It uses multimedia displays, personal stories and over 400 objects to show how the camp’s role and meaning have changed. The collection includes thousands of items—letters, photographs, documents and more than 200 video interviews with witnesses from every decade since 1945. Temporary exhibitions are held in a relocated Nissen hut, the last of about 220 such huts once on the site. Visitors enter through the former baggage hall, now the museum foyer. Upstairs, a glass staircase and lift provide barrier-free access to further displays. The new centre will add 1 700 square metres of space for research, media and public events. Through exhibitions, projects and educational programmes, the museum examines migration, belonging and human rights, encouraging discussion about freedom and asylum.