Deportation of Jews from Luxembourg

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The deportation of Jews from Luxembourg took place in seven transports from October 16, 1941 to June 17, 1943.

Jewish population

Jews fled from the German Reich to Luxembourg during the time of National Socialism. In particular in 1933 after the National Socialists came to power , in 1935 after the referendum on the Saar area and the passing of the Nuremberg Laws, and in 1938 after the November pogroms , there were major refugee movements, so that the Jewish population in Luxembourg grew to around 3,700 people, more than half of them were foreign refugees of different nationalities. In the chaos of the German invasion in May 1940, 1,500 Jews were evacuated to France or were able to flee there. Thanks to the active help of the head of the Wehrmacht pass office, Franz von Hoiningen-Huene, numerous Jewish families were still able to legally leave occupied Luxembourg until November 1941 .

Disenfranchisement and displacement

Nazi rally in front of the old synagogue (destroyed by Nazis in 1943)

On August 2, 1940, Gustav Simon was appointed head of the Luxembourg CdZ area . The anti-Jewish measures began just a month later. With the Jewish index of the Jewish community (Konsistorium), a police register of the Jews living in Luxembourg City from August 1940 and the registration registers of the Aliens Police, the occupying power had access to sufficient registration data to be able to use the “Ordinance on Measures in the field of Jewish law “to define the Jews and to discriminate them according to the Blood Protection Act. In doing so, she was supported by the Luxembourg Administrative Commission of a kind of substitute government. This made Luxembourg the first Western European country to be occupied with a race law. Professional bans, aryanization of Jewish property and forced labor followed gradually. The synagogues were profaned and destroyed.

On September 12, 1940, the roughly 2,000 Jews who remained in Luxembourg were ordered by the Gestapo to leave the country within 14 days. At the request of the religious community, however, they started to emigrate over a longer period of time. Between October 1940 and January 1941 refugees were brought to Portugal via France and Spain in thirteen transports accompanied by Gestapo officials, or after adventurous wanderings were interned in the French camps of Gurs or Les Milles if entry into neutral countries was refused. Some of them were later deported to the extermination camps with the other inmates. In mid-October 1941 the emigration was stopped on Himmler's instructions .

Isolation and deportation

In July 1941, the Gestapo ordered the Jewish old people's home in Fünfbrunnen to be set up as a collection camp for Jews unable to work, with the consent of the Reich Main Security Office . On July 29, 1941, it was ordered that Jews must wear a yellow armband; at the same time their freedom of movement was restricted. On September 17, 1941 at the latest, Hitler decided to evacuate the Jews to the East from the Old Reich, to which Luxembourg was tacitly included . The initiative for Luxembourg is said to have come from Gauleiter Simon, as he wanted to be one of the first to report his area as free of Jews .

The deportation of Jews from Luxembourg took place from October 16, 1941 to June 17, 1943. The first train took more Jews into Trier . In the Altreich the last six Luxembourg transports were included in the larger transports prepared there. The deportation orders (state police orders) were issued by Fritz Hartmann , head of the task force of the security police and the security service in Luxembourg . Department IVa for Jewish and emigrant property in the civil administration received copies of the deportation lists in order to be able to confiscate and dispose of the property better. The keys to the apartment had to be handed over to the security police (later to a representative of the council of elders); the Jews had to de-register properly at the police registration office and the food office. The customs clearance at the train station carried out body searches so that no securities , foreign exchange , savings bank books , precious metals and pieces of jewelry, with the exception of wedding rings, could be exported.

Deportations of Jews from Luxembourg
date Destination over number
October 16, 1941 Litzmannstadt ghetto trier 331
April 23, 1942 Izbica Ghetto Stuttgart 27
July 12, 1942 Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp Chemnitz 24
July 26, 1942 Theresienstadt concentration camp Cologne 27
July 28, 1942 Theresienstadt concentration camp Dortmund 159
April 6, 1943 Theresienstadt concentration camp Dortmund 97
June 17, 1943 partly Auschwitz, partly Theresienstadt ? 11

Around forty of these deportees survived by the end of the war (Ino Arndt mentions 43; Change Hohengarten 41). Of the Jews who fled and deported from Luxembourg to Belgium and France, almost 400 were also deported. Around 1400 Jews were victims of the persecution of the Jews in Luxembourg; this corresponds to a third of the Jews who had still lived in the country at the beginning of 1940.

Work-up

Legal processing

Simon escaped charge by suicide in 1945 . His deputy Heinrich Christian Siekmeier was sentenced to seven years in prison. Hartmann was sentenced to death, pardoned and deported to Germany in 1957. His deputy, Walther Runge, was sentenced to death in absentia without consequences . Josef Ackermann , who was responsible for the Aryanization, was convicted and released in the 1950s.

memory

Memorial of the former Hollerich train station

On the grounds of the Fünfbrunnen Monastery today, a memorial and an information board commemorate the deportation and murder of Luxembourg's Jews. The Mémorial de la Déportation in the former Hollerich station building has been commemorating the deportation of Jews, conscripts and resistance workers since 1996 .

In June 2015, after the Artuso report, the Luxembourg government and parliament apologized for the Luxembourg collaboration in the persecution of Jews. Vincent Artuso found evidence that two lists were drawn up in November 1940: one with the names of 471 Polish Jews working in Luxembourg and one with the names of 280 Jewish children in the country. At that time, the Grand Duchy had been occupied by the Germans for six months. But the lists did not come from Nazi organizations, but from the Luxembourg Administrative Commission, a kind of substitute government.

A memorial in memory of the victims of the Shoah was inaugurated on June 17, 2018 in Luxembourg City. 75 years ago, on June 17, 1943, the last Jews were sent by the Nazis from Luxembourg train station to the extermination camps in the east.

See also

literature

  • Ino Arndt: Luxemburg - German occupation and exclusion of Jews . In: Wolfgang Benz (Ed.): Dimension of the genocide. Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-486-54631-7 , pp. 95ff.
  • Change Hohengarten: The National Socialist Jewish Policy in Luxembourg. Commissioned by the Memorial de la Déportation in Luxemburg-Hollerich. 2nd, change Edition. Luxembourg 2004.
  • Marc Schoentgen: Jews in Luxembourg 1940-45. (PDF)
  • Mil Lorang: Luxembourg in the shadow of the Shoah . Edited by MemoShoah Luxembourg. Editions Phi, Soleuvre 2019. ISBN 978-2-919791-18-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Änder High Garden: The National Socialist Jewish policy in Luxembourg. 2004, p. 13f.
  2. ↑ Änder High Garden: The National Socialist Jewish policy in Luxembourg. 2004, p. 43.
  3. ↑ Document VEJ 5/199 in: Katja Happe, Michael Mayer, Maja Peers (edit.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (source collection) Volume 5: Western and Northern Europe 1940– June 1942. Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-58682-4 , pp. 528-530.
  4. ↑ Jochen Zenthöfer: Luxemburg denounced Jews The myth of the innocent land is gone , FAZ June 9, 2015, accessed November 13, 2016
  5. ↑ Änder High Garden: The National Socialist Jewish policy in Luxembourg. 2004, p. 30 ff.
  6. ↑ Document VEJ 5/201 in: Katja Happe et al. (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews ... , Volume 5: Western and Northern Europe 1940 – June 1942. Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-58682 -4 , pp. 533-534.
  7. ↑ Document VEJ 5/200 ( Ordinance on Jewish Property in Luxembourg of September 5, 1940 ) and VEJ 5/210 in: Katja Happe et al. (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews ... , Volume 5: West - and Northern Europe 1940 – June 1942. Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-58682-4 , pp. 530ff and 548f.
  8. ↑ Document VEJ 5/202 in: Katja Happe, etc. (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews ... , Volume 5: Western and Northern Europe 1940-June 1942. Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-58682 -4 , pp. 535-539.
  9. ↑ Änder High Garden: The National Socialist Jewish policy in Luxembourg. 2004, p. 43 ff.
  10. ↑ Katja Happe et al. (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews ... , Volume 5: Western and Northern Europe 1940 – June 1942. Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-58682-4 , p. 43.
  11. ^ Ino Arndt: Luxemburg - German occupation and exclusion of Jews. In: Dimension of Genocide. P. 102.
  12. ↑ Document VEJ 5/212 in: Katja Happe, etc. (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews ... , Volume 5: Western and Northern Europe 1940-June 1942. Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-58682 -4 , p. 552.
  13. ↑ Änder High Garden: The National Socialist Jewish policy in Luxembourg. 2004, p. 62 f.
  14. ↑ Änder High Garden: The National Socialist Jewish policy in Luxembourg. 2004, p. 81.
  15. ↑ Änder High Garden: The National Socialist Jewish policy in Luxembourg. 2004, p. 82.
  16. ↑ Document VEJ 12/227 in: Katja Happe u. a. (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (collection of sources) Volume 12: Western and Northern Europe, June 1942–1945. Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-486-71843-0 , pp. 604–605.
  17. ↑ Document VEJ 5/223 in: Katja Happe, etc. (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews ... , Volume 5: Western and Northern Europe 1940-June 1942. Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-486-58682 -4 , p. 564.
  18. ↑ Änder High Garden: The National Socialist Jewish policy in Luxembourg. 2004, p. 83.
  19. ↑ Änder High Garden: The National Socialist Jewish policy in Luxembourg. 2004; Ino Arndt lists another seven Jews without assigning them to specific transports.
  20. ^ Ino Arndt: Luxemburg - German occupation and exclusion of Jews. In: Dimension of Genocide. P. 103 (indicates double counting in older publications with 334 people).
  21. ^ Ino Arndt: Luxemburg - German occupation and exclusion of Jews. P. 104 / VEJ names more than 400, namely 565 people: Katja Happe u. a. (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by National Socialist Germany 1933–1945 (collection of sources) Volume 12: Western and Northern Europe, June 1942–1945. Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-486-71843-0 , p. 62.
  22. ↑ Katja Happe u. a. (Ed.): The Persecution and Murder of the European Jews ... , Volume 12: Western and Northern Europe, June 1942–1945. Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-486-71843-0 , p. 62.
  23. ↑ Emile Krier: Luxembourg at the end of the occupation and the new beginning ( memento of the original from November 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Regionalgeschichte.net, accessed November 9, 2016 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.regionalgeschichte.net
  24. ↑ Änder High Garden: The National Socialist Jewish policy in Luxembourg. 2004, p. 27.
  25. ↑ The myth of the innocent land is gone , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 9, 2015. Retrieved October 22, 2018.
  26. ↑ Parliament and government apologize. Tageblatt Letzebuerg, June 9, 2015, accessed November 13, 2016.
  27. ↑ Danielle Schumacher: Monument dedicated to the victims of the Shoah , Luxemburger Wort from June 17, 2018.