Holocaust in Luxembourg

I am always surprised why so little is reported about the Holocaust in Luxembourg. In the late 1930s, Luxembourg had a population of approximately 300,000, of which 3.500 were Jews. In addition, more than 1,000 German-Jewish refugees had found shelter in Luxembourg.

Nazi Germany occupied Luxembourg in May 1940, with the Luxembourg government fleeing into exile in London for the duration of World War II. Following a period of military administration, the country was placed under a German civil administration headed by Gustav Simon, district head of the adjoining German province of Koblenz-Trier.

In August 1942, Germany formally annexed Luxembourg.

On 6 August 1940, Simon ordered all police functions removed from the Luxembourg gendarmerie and entrusted to German police units. On 14 August, he proscribed references to the “State” or “Grand Duchy” of Luxembourg and suspended its constitution. On 26 August, the Reichsmark was introduced as legal tender, and on 20 January 1941, the Luxembourg franc was abolished. All existing political parties were banned, and the only authorized political institution was the Volksdeutsche Bewegung.

The Nuremberg Race Laws were introduced in Luxembourg on 5 September 1940, followed by several other anti-Jewish ordinances. In practice, however, Jews were encouraged to leave the country. Then, from the 8th of August 1940 until the Germans forbade emigration on 15 October 1941, more than 2,500 Jews left Luxembourg, the majority for the unoccupied zone of France. Many of these Jews were later deported from France to killing centers in occupied Poland.

The monastery of Cinqfontaines (Fünfbrunnen) was built in 1906 by the Catholic order of the Sacred Heart, and priests lived there continuously until 2021, apart from an interruption during the Second World War.

In 1941, the Nazi occupiers closed the monastery Cinqfontaines and reopened the site, called it the Jewish Retirement Home. It was a place of internment—by the Nazis—for the Jews still living in Luxembourg.

German authorities interned about 800 remaining Jews in the Fuenfbrunnen transit camp near the city of Ulflingen in Northern Luxembourg. Between October 1941 and April 1943, 674 Jews were deported from Fuenfbrunnen in eight transports to Lodz, Auschwitz, and Theresienstadt.

Like in all the other occupied countries—when, I say all, I mean in all Eastern European nations—there were people in Luxembourg who welcomed the Nazis. The Germanisation was facilitated by a collaborationist political group, the Volksdeutsche Bewegung (“Ethnic German Movement”).

From October 1941, Nazi authorities began to deport the around 800 remaining Jews from Luxembourg to Łódź Ghetto and the concentration camps at Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. Only 36 Jews from Luxembourg are known to have survived the Nazi camps. Estimates of the total number of Luxembourg Jews murdered during the Holocaust range from 1,000 to 2,500. These figures include those killed in Nazi camps, in Luxembourg, or after deportation from France.

When Luxembourg was invaded and annexed by Nazi Germany in 1940, a national consciousness started to come about. From 1941 onwards, the first resistance groups, such as the Letzeburger Ro’de Lé’w or the PI-Men, were founded. Operating underground, they secretly worked against the German occupation, helping to bring political refugees and those trying to avoid being conscripted into the German forces across the border, and put out patriotic leaflets (often depicting Grand Duchess Charlotte) encouraging the population of Luxembourg to pull through. On 19 November 1944, 30 members of the Luxembourgish resistance defended the town of Vianden against the more extensive Waffen-SS attack in the Battle of Vianden.

On 27 January 2021, Luxembourg signed an agreement with the Jewish Consistory of Luxembourg (Consistoire Israélite de Luxembourg) on outstanding Holocaust asset issues. The signatories were the Prime Minister, Mr. Xavier Bettel, and the President of the Jewish Consistory, Mr. Albert Aflalo—while the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO) and the Luxembourg Foundation for the Remembrance of the Shoah acted as co-signatories.

They focused the agreement on a settlement for all outstanding Holocaust asset issues. In an interview with the prominent Luxembourg newspaper L’essentiel, the President of the Foundation for the Remembrance of the Shoah, Mr. François Moyse—referred to the chairmanship of IHRA, which Luxembourg held from March 2019 to March 2020 and which had considerably contributed to the dynamic of the negotiations. The negotiations had started soon after the country had taken over the presidency. The origins of this agreement dated back to 2009, when the United States, Luxembourg, and 45 other countries committed to rectify the consequences of the Nazi-era wrongful asset seizures and to promote the welfare of Holocaust survivors around the world by endorsing the Terezin Declaration.

Sources

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/luxembourg

History

https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/news-archive/luxembourg-signs-agreement-outstanding-holocaust-asset-issues

Luxembourg

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/luxembourg

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The mouse that roared-When Luxembourg said no to the Nazis

Following the German invasion of Luxembourg on May 10, 1940, Luxembourg was briefly placed under military occupation. On August 2, 1940, the military government was dissolved and replaced by a civilian government under the leadership of the German civilian administrator of the adjoining German district.

The Luxembourg population was declared to be German and was to use German as its only language; the German authorities, under the orders of the Gauleiter Gustav Simon, developed a robust policy of germanization.

In August 1942, German authorities announced the formal annexation of Luxembourg by the Third Reich into Nazi Germany. Following the announcement was a program of ‘Germanization,’ or the forceful imposition of the German language. At all levels of the administration, important positions went to German nationals and very rapidly the Nazi Party machinery assumed far-reaching control of all aspects of social and family life.

On August 30, Gustav Simon announced that all Luxembourger males of military age were to be conscripted into the Wehrmacht to fight against Allies. It was this decision that motivated the people of Luxembourg from anger to action, sticking to their national motto, “Mir woelle bleiwe waat mir sinn” (We want to remain what we are).

The Luxembourg population responded quickly against the forced conscription. Within hours citizens began organizing a general strike. On August 31, the strike officially began in the town of Wiltz. Local town officials, Michel Worré and Nicolas Müller, gathered other officials and refused to go to work. Slowly they were joined by other workers as the movement spread. Leaflets were printed and distributed secretly throughout the country.

Soon after the striking in Wiltz, workers from the southwestern industrial towns of Schifflange and Differdange were alerted and also refused to go to work. In Schifflange, Hans Adam, a worker of German origins sounded an alarm across the valley to alert all workers. In Differdange, news of the strike spread by word of mouth and increased in intensity. On September 2, over 150 Differdange mill workers refused to take their shifts, inciting death threats from the German director of the mill. Approximately 50 workers still refused and declared that they were on strike.

The strike spread also to Esch-sur-Alzette, the capital of the Luxembourg mining area. Here, all aspects of the economic life were paralyzed, including administration, agriculture, industry, and education structures. The central post office in Luxembourg received formal confirmation of the strike soon after. Few mailbags were even opened as a mere semblance of work continued. At the approach of any German employee, the postal workers dispersed back to their work-places and pretended to work. Only letters and packages clearly addressed to Luxembourgers who had been deported to Germany for forced labor, were handled with care.

Throughout the country, schoolchildren were kept away from school, teachers refused to teach, laborers refused to work, there was little or no production of steel, milk, and other products. News outlets in Allied countries began covering the protest as the first general strike to be held in a German-occupied territory. For the rest of the world, it exposed German propaganda, which claimed that the people of Luxembourg were voluntarily joining German forces.

German authorities, alert to any sign of resistance and fearing further escalation of protests, mobilized immediately. An order declaring a state of emergency and introducing martial law was signed by the Chief of Civil Administration, Gustav Simon, threatening that strikers were to be immediately shot.

Beginning September 1, German officials began arresting strike leaders. Within days, 21 leaders, many of whom were teachers, were arrested for interrogation and then executed. This group included six leaders from the Differdange mill and Michel Worré and Nicolas Müller, from Wiltz. Most were tried by a military tribunal, sentenced to death, and deported to the Hinzert concentration camp were they were shot.

According to a German officer who witnessed the executions of Worré and Müller, their lasts words were, “Vive Lëtzebuerg” (Long live Luxembourg!). Hans Adam, who had sounded the alarm in Schifflange and had German origins, was considered to be a traitor and was decapitated. Many of the leaders’ families were sent to prison and work camps in Germany.

At least 200 other Luxembourgers were arrested. Over 80 were further tried by the special tribunal and transferred to the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police. Hundreds of high school children were arrested and send to re-education camps in Germany along with several dozen industrial worker trainees and several young postmen.

There is little information available about any further organized striking after German suppression. The strike was effectively halted. A series of posters were later posted throughout Luxembourg announcing the death of the strikers as a consequence of the strike, bearing the names, occupation, and residency of each victim. Although the exact number of strikers is unknown, the movement did mark Luxembourg’s resistance to the German occupation, gaining attention worldwide.

Of the Luxembourger men drafted for service in the German Wehrmacht, about forty percent refused and went into hiding, half of them within the country’s borders. Some escaped to Britain and joined the Allied forces to fight against Germany and the Axis powers.

After the 1942 general strike, German occupation continued to repress the Luxembourger people. Thousands were arrested and tortured and hundreds died in concentration camps. Whole families were deported to East Germany and replaced by German families.

(The names of the victims of the strike who were executed at Hinzert are among those inscribed on a catafalque at the site of the concentration camp)