Salzgitter's landmark, the monument to the city's history, was created by Braunschweig sculptor Professor Jürgen Weber and presented to the public in 1995. With it, the town acknowledges its own and Germany's contemporary history.

Unique in contemporary art, the monument commemorates the development of the industrial area and city under National Socialism and the forced labor in the Reichswerke. It also commemorates the suffering and death of countless people fleeing from the former German eastern territories at the end of the Second World War, the dismantling of industrial plants by the Allies after 1945 and the resistance of the workers against it, but also the development of an economic area into the third largest industrial location in Lower Saxony.

Almost 14 meters high and weighing more than 730 hundredweights, the monument has found its place in the bustling city centre and gives identity to a still young city. The sampler from the smelting works rises from its top, symbolizing the people's will to live and rebuild. For many viewers, the sculptural work of art is an encounter with their own life story.

Three other places are reminders of Salzgitter's history: the Jammertal and Westerholz cemeteries, final resting places for around 4,000 concentration camp prisoners and deportees who died during the Second World War, and the Drütte concentration camp memorial and documentation site. Drütte concentration camp was established in 1942 and was one of the first and largest satellite camps of Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg. More than 3,000 prisoners of different nationalities were housed here and had to work in armaments production.