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From German occupation of Luxembourg in World War II

One prominent Jewish survivor was Alfred Oppenheimer, a member of the Consistoire (similar to the Jewish Councils of occupied eastern Europe). Together with his family, he was deported to a concentration camp, where his wife was killed and then to Auschwitz where his son Rene was gassed. Alfred Oppenheimer survived the death camp and was one of the witnesses at the trial of Adolf Eichmann. He returned to live in Luxembourg until his death aged over 90, and was known for his involvement in public education about the Nazi regime and the Holocaust. The Prix René Oppenheimer was created in memory of his son.

From Luxembourg in World War II and The Holocaust in Luxembourg

Before the war, Luxembourg had a population of about 3500 Jews, many of them newly arrived in the country to escape persecution in Germany. The Nuremberg Laws, which had applied in Germany since 1935, were enforced in Luxembourg from September 1940 and Jews were encouraged to leave the country for Vichy France. Emigration was forbidden in October 1941, but not before nearly 2500 had fled. In practice they were little better off in Vichy France, and many of those who left were later deported and killed. From September 1941, all Jews in Luxembourg were forced to wear the yellow Star of David badge to identify them.

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. Around 700 were deported from the Transit Camp at Fuenfbrunnen in Ulflingen in the north of Luxembourg.

Luxembourg was declared "Judenrein" ("cleansed of Jews") except for those in hiding on 19 October 1941. Of the original Jewish population of Luxembourg, only 36 are known to have survived the war.

Additional

There were about 3,500 Jews in Luxembourg before the German occupation. Of these, 1,500 were refugees, having fled Germany already in the 1930s. At the outbreak of war in Luxembourg, many Jews left the country for France, where a large number of them would later be rounded up and deported to the death camps just like the French Jews.

New

By 1927, the Jewish community had grown to 1,171, most of whom had fled the Russian pogroms. In the 1930s, their number was swelled by refugees from Germany and Austria, so that by 1935 there were 3,144 Jews in the country, 870 of them Luxembourgers.

IGNORE ABOVE

In 1940 on the eve of the German invasion, there were more than 3,500 Jews in Luxembourg.

By the outbreak of the Second World War, the population had grown to about 4,200, fuelled by the arrival of 3,200 refugees from Nazi Germany and Central Europe. (Commémoration)

Luxembourg was invaded by Germany on 10 May 1940; before and during the invasion, 50,000 Luxembourgers managed to flee the country, amongst which were 1,650 Jews, who escaped into France and Belgium.

Other Jews managed to escape thanks to clandestine rescues, carried out by both the resistance and individuals; the most famous of these individuals was Victor Bodson, a cabinet minister and Righteous Among the Nations. From October 1940, the Gestapo adopted a policy of encouraging Jews to emigrate westwards; in the following year, nearly, 1,000 took this opportunity, although it would not be enough to escape the Nazis' persecution.

Discrimination and harassment

On 28 July 1940, when Gauleiter Gustav Simon took up his appointment, the first anti-Semitic measures were introduced: their bank accounts were frozen, their property confiscated, they had to hand in any valuables (jewelry, furs, antiques, ...), were forbidden from marrying non-Jews, were not allowed contact with Aryans any more and had to wear a visible yellow star. On 5 September, Gustav Simon announced the extension of the Nuremberg Laws to Luxembourg.

From 7 February 1941 a law mandated the confiscation of all property of those who had emigrated up until 1940. From 18 April 1941 this was extended to Jews remaining in Luxembourg.

From July 1941, they were barred from entering and various areas of public life including pubs and cafés, cinemas, theatres, public baths; they had to do their shopping between 9 and 11 a.m., and were not allowed to leave their homes between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. They were additionally forbidden from using public transport, or from entering restaurants, pubs, cafés, cinemas, or theatres. Also from July 1941, the wearing of a yellow armband became mandatory. Jewish-owned businesses were expropriated. They had to first register, and later hand in, any gold, jewelry, or shares they owned.

From 29 September 1941, Jews had to take on the additional names of "Israel" or "Sarah", and were made to wear a yellow Star of David from 14 October 1941. Between November 1941 and June 1942, they were forced to hand in numerous household and other items, including radios, binoculars, bicycles, telephones, type-writers, cameras, clothes, electric blankets, gramophones, household appliances, irons.

The Nazis also engaged in anti-Semitic propaganda in Luxembourg, which included the screening of the film Jud Süß. There were also several public acts of violence and intimidation, where men in uniform disrupted Jewish religious services, threatened and harassed Jews in public, and put up anti-Semitic posters outside Jewish shops. The country's synagogues were vandalised, in some cases destroyed.

In May 1941 the synagogue of Luxembourg City was closed by the Gestapo, vandalised and then razed, which took until autumn of 1943. On 3 June 1941 the synagogue in Esch was also destroyed.

The confiscated property was either sold off or used by various Nazi organisations. The money was intended to be used towards funding the Germanisation policy in Luxembourg, the so-called Aufbaufonds Moselland. In November 1941 all Jewish organisations were dissolved, and more than 35,000 Reichsmark were confiscated.

Encouraged emigration

On 12 September 1940, very soon after Gustav Simon had taken office, the Jews were given an ultimatum by the Gestapo: they were all to leave the country within 15 days. In the end, after the Consistoire negotiated and offered to organise the emigration itself, the ultimatum was rescinded.

However, the final goal of the occupiers was for the country to be free of Jews eventually. Until autumn 1941, deportation and expulsion were the objective of Nazi policy. The Jews were to be encouraged to emigrate. From August 1940 to May 1941, hundreds of Jews including the community leaders fled in sixteen groups to France, and Portugal, some of them continuing on to the UK.

In fact, from August 1940 to October 1941, more than 2,500 Jews left Luxembourg, mostly for France. Hundreds of these would later be deported from France to the extermination camps in the East.

In April 1941, the last comunity leaders, Grand Rabbi Robert Serebrenik and Louis Sternberg, travelled to Berlin to speak with Adolf Eichmann, who informed them that Jewish emigration from Luxembourg would soon be stopped. They themselves left Luxembourg for Portugal in the last convoy in May 1941, fearing for their lives.

Rabbi Serebrenik travelled on to the United States, where he founded the Luxembourg Jewish Information Office, which attempted to save as many Jews as possible from the Grand Duchy. This later became the Luxembourg Jewish Committee, and on 11 March 1942, the Community of Luxembourgish Jews in New York.

Internment and deportation

On 15 October 1941, the emigration policy was indeed reversed: it was now no longer possible to leave the country. On 13 October the Consistoire reported that 750 Jews remained in Luxembourg. These consisted mostly of the elderly: 80 percent were more than 50 years old, and 60 percent were over 60 years old. Only 13 of them were fit for work.

The Germans had begun rounding up the Jews since two months earlier. In the former Jesuit monastery of Fünfbrunnen (Cinqfontaines), close to the railway line near Troisvierges (Ulflingen), an internment camp for all the Grand-Duchy's Jews was erected. The euphemistic term for this ghetto was a Jüdisches Altersheim, a "Jewish nursing home". In total, 300 Jews passed through Fünfbrunnen. Many had to wait there for months in inhumane, ghetto-like conditions with a lack of basic hygiene and medical care, and crowded together in cramped conditions.

From Luxembourg, 696 Jewish prisoners were deported to ghettos, labour camps, and extermination camps, of whom 56 survived.

A total of 700 Jews were deported from Luxembourg to the ghettoes, concentration and death camps in Eastern Europe. They were transported in 7 trains on:

• 16 October 1941 (334 Jews)

• 23 April 1942 (27 Jews)
• 12 July 1942 (24 Jews)
• 26 July 1942 (27 Jews)
• 28 July 1942 (159 Jews)
• 6 April 1943 (97 Jews)
• 17 Juni 1943 (11 Jews)

Out of the Jews deported from Luxembourg to the East, only 36 are known to have survived.

More than 500 Luxembourgish Jews that had fled to France or Belgium were also deported to camps, of whom 16 survived.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website states: "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."

At the end of the war, out of six Jewish congregations (Luxembourg City, Esch-Alzette. Ettelbrück. Mondorf, Medernach and Grevenmacher) only two remained, in Luxembourg and in Esch.

After the war, some of those that had fled Luxembourg returned. Communities were re-established across Luxembourg, particularly in Luxembourg City and Esch-sur-Alzette. Synagogues were built in both of these cities; whilst the capital's Great Synagogue had been demolished by the Nazis.

Role of Luxembourgish institutions

After the French surrender, Wehrer and Reuter took the view that Luxembourg should collaborate with Germany in order to maintain its sovereignty. In order to shore up the Commission's legitimacy, in July they attempted to persuade the German government to let them send a delegation to meet the Grand Duchess in Portugal, where she was in exile. However, the appointment of Gustav Simon as head of the civil administration in July 1940 was to put a stop to these plans, as it signalled the Third Reich's intent to annex Luxembourg. The members of the Administrative Commission, however, decided to remain in office, as they believed they could influence and soften German occupation policy in doing so. In practice, however, the Commission was reduced more and more to the role of a transmission channel for Nazi policy, including its anti-Semitic policies. The Commission was abolished by the Gauleiter on 23 December 1940.

In September 1940, the German civil administration demanded that the Administrative Commission make a list of school pupils who were Jewish, who were to be excluded from education. On 6 September, the Commission then sent a circular out to local authorities, ordering them to establish such lists. It did not specify how they were to go about this, and the execution of this policy varied from one area to another, and from school to school. Some schools did the absolute minimum: they replied that they had demanded that Jewish pupils make themselves known, and no-one having done so, left it at that. The headteacher of the "Industrial and Commercial School" stated that he had personally told Jewish students the news of their expulsion, but did not give their names. Yet other schools reported how many Jews they had excluded, and gave their names.

Another example shows that the Commission was not above taking initiative. On 9 November 1940, the civil administration ordered the administrative commission to determine the number of Polish Jews in Luxembourg. The latter replied on 21 November that their number was 480, and that this number had been derived from examining the first names and surnames of those listed in the immigration police's files, as these contained no rubrics for religion or ethnicity.

Further reading

• Artuso, Vincent. "Des excuses, mais au nom de qui ? L’administration luxembourgeoise et la Shoah". In: forum, No. 322 (October 2012). p. 9-11
• Clesse, René. "Shoah in Luxemburg". In: Ons Stad, No. 71 (2002). p. 18-19
• Clesse, René. "'Die Natur is gnädiger als die Menschen'". In: Ons Stad, No. 36 (1991). p. 22-25
• Dostert, Paul. "Luxemburg unter deutscher Besatzung 1940-45: Die Bevölkerung eines kleinen Landes zwischen Kollaboration und Widerstand". Zug der Erinnerung.
• Meyer, Alain. "Les Grands rabbins du Luxembourg." In: Ons Stad, No. 36 (1991). p. 18-21
• Schoentgen, Marc. "Juden in Luxemburg 1940-1945". In: forum, No. 179 (1997). p. 17-19

External links

• Luxembourg at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM)
• Luxembourg at European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI)