After the Soviets ceased to use Sachsenhausen as a concentration camp the site was used, for some years, by East Germany's "Kasernierte Volkspolizei", notionally a police division and in reality a precursor of the country's own National People's Army, which was formally established in 1956. 1956 was also the year in which planning began to adapt the concentration camp site as a national memorial. This was inaugurated four years later on 23 April 1961. The first director of the renamed "Sachsenhausen National Memorial Site" (""Nationale Mahn- u. Gedenkstätte Sachsenhausen"") was Christian Mahler, at one time a senior police officer, who back in the Nazi period had been an inmate at Sachsenhausen between 1938 and 1943. The plans involved the removal of most of the original buildings and the construction of an obelisk, statue and meeting area, reflecting the outlook of the East German government of that time.