The memorial was inaugurated on 30 December 1949 by the Ministry of Religion and its Director-General, Rabbi Dr. Samuel Zangvil Kahane, whose purview included Mount Zion. 

That same year, Kahane oversaw the on-site burial of ashes of victims from the Oranienburg concentration camp together with desecrated Torah scrolls recovered from Nazi Europe.

The Chief Rabbinate chose Mount Zion as the site for the Chamber of the Holocaust because of its proximity to David's Tomb, which symbolically connotes ancient Jewish history and the promise of messianic redemption