Alweraje

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Alweraje was the name of a resistance group against the German occupation that was active in Luxembourg from June 1941 to August 1942 .

history

In June 1941, several resistance groups got together in Schifflingen : the communist combat group Schifflingen with groups around the sculptor Wenzel Profant and the teacher Albert Wingert . The name was made up of the first letters of the founders' first names - Albert, Wenzel, Raymond (Arensdorff) and Jean (Doffing). According to later information from Wingert, the group had up to 400 members and helpers.

Wingert had been a teacher in Schifflingen since 1934. Even before the “ seizure of power ” in 1933, he had warned against the National Socialists . After the occupation of Luxembourg by the German Wehrmacht , he was arrested in October 1940 because the Gestapo had found weapons on him, and he was sentenced to three months in solitary confinement. Three months after his release he was dismissed as a teacher by the German authorities because he refused to deliver the " Hitler salute ". From June to December 1941 he had to work in the construction of the motorway from Wittlich to Trier , but returned to Schifflingen on foot as often as possible to organize the resistance. Profant and his group had been sticking drawings with the Red Lion from the Luxembourg flag on public buildings since 1940, they put the old names back on the signs of the squares and streets renamed by the Germans, and in May 1941 they hung Luxembourg flags on the church towers of Schifflingen and péting . Profant was questioned by the Gestapo shortly after Alweraje was founded, whereupon he fled and came to England in early 1944. There he became a parachutist and, like other Luxembourgers, fought against the Germans on the British side.

Raymond Arensdorff was a watchmaker, and his parents were also active in the resistance. His mother Anna Arensdorff-Pierre, also a founding member of the Alweraje , hid a Canadian pilot in her apartment, even though it was above the office of the German police. His father was sentenced to nine months in solitary confinement in May 1941.

Jean Doffing's father was a gravedigger and had a workshop in the Schifflingen cemetery. In this workshop Alweraje ran a printing press, an arms store and a radio station. Leaflets and sticky notes were produced here and distributed all over the country. The group also regularly printed the newspaper Ons Zeidong o'ni Maulkuerf . By September 1942, 20 issues had been printed, with up to 3000 copies being distributed in the south of Luxembourg. In the run-up to the creation of a “civil status record ”, in which the German occupiers had hoped for a majority of Luxembourgers who would profess their “Germanness”, Alweraje and other resistance groups asked the population to tick Letzeburg three times on the relevant questionnaire . When a political debacle became apparent during random checks, the collection of the questionnaires was forbidden by Gauleiter Gustav Simon , who is said to have had a fit of anger that lasted several days because of this defeat.

In August 1942, the Gestapo arrested around 100 Luxembourg resistance members, including almost all members of the Alweraje inner circle . Wingert was arrested in Düsseldorf , Arensdorff and other combatants were brought to the Gestapo headquarters in Esch for "stick interrogation" and from there to the SS special camp in Hinzert . Doffing, his two brothers, and one other group member were able to go into hiding. Raymond Arensdorff died on February 6, 1945 in the Dachau concentration camp . Albert Wingert survived a stay in the Gusen concentration camp and was again politically active in Luxembourg after the war. Another member, the German-born Hans Adam , was executed with the guillotine in the Klingelpütz prison in Cologne for participating in the general strike in Luxembourg on September 11, 1942 .

Commemoration

  • A school in Schifflingen was named after him in memory of Albert Wingert.
  • In 2010, the Musée national de la Résistance in Esch showed the exhibition Spott dem Naziregime - Le régime nazi tourné en dérision , in which caricatures from Ons Zeidong could also be seen.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Schifflingen at war. P. 10 , accessed June 26, 2014 .
  2. ↑ Marc Kayser / Marc Limpach: Luxembourg Resistance and Democratic Anti-Fascism. March 2005, accessed June 27, 2015 . (PDF file)
  3. ↑ a b c Schifflingen at war. P. 11 , accessed June 26, 2014 .
  4. ↑ a b Schifflingen at war. P. 12 , accessed June 26, 2014 .
  5. ↑ Train of memory. In: zug-der-erinnerung.eu. May 10, 1940, accessed June 26, 2015 .
  6. ↑ Renée Wagner: Caricature: Weapon of the defenseless. Woxx, June 25, 2010, accessed June 26, 2010 .