Germany opened a museum on Sunday at the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where tens of thousands of victims died during the Nazi era.

More than 60 years after the camp was liberated, politicians inaugurated a new building containing Holocaust victims' diaries, drawings, items of clothing and objects kept by families for years as well as video statements from survivors.

Some 100 survivors of the camp, near the northern city of Hanover, attended the opening ceremony.

The exhibition is important for future generations, said Stephan Kramer, General Secretary of the Central Council for Jews in Germany.

"We must take the baton of memory and be fully aware of the challenges and demands it involves," said Kramer, saying that duty fell to Jews, Christians, Muslims and atheists alike in Germany.

"We will never be silent when racism and anti-Semitism is expressed in whatever form," he said.

Some estimates put the number of people who died in the concentration camp at about 50,000 and those that died in the prisoner of war camp at the same site at about 20,000.

Holocaust victim Anne Frank, famed for her diaries, died at Bergen-Belsen at the age of 15.