Ernest Toussaint

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Annestation of the death sentence of Ernest Toussaint and other defendants in September 1942
The Jericho memorial in Rumelange, on which Toussaint's name is also found

Ernest Toussaint (born March 6, 1908 in Rumelange ; † September 3, 1942 in the SS special camp Hinzert ) was a Luxembourg boxer.

In 1936 Ernest Toussaint started at the Olympic Games in Berlin and reached the quarter-finals in the heavyweight division , where he lost to the eventual bronze medalist, the Norwegian Erling Nilsen . He finished fifth.

On August 31, 1942, Toussaint, who worked as a deep furnace worker at the Société des Hauts Fourneaux et Aciéries de Differdange (HADIR), took part in the general strike of the Luxembourg population against the German occupation, which was directed in particular against the forced recruitment of Luxembourgers into the armed forces . He stood in front of the ironworks gate and tried to keep his colleagues from going to work. Four days later he was shot dead in the SS special camp in Hinzert , together with 19 other supposed “ringleaders” for “endangering the German reconstruction work in Luxembourg by rebellious strikes during the war” . The families of those executed were deported to Silesia . Toussaint is said to have been a member of a communist resistance group in Differdange . Fritz Hartmann , the chairman of the court martial that sentenced Toussaint to death and the former head of the Gestapo in Luxembourg, testified before a court after the war that the conviction of Toussaint was mainly based on his political views.

Toussaint's name is immortalized on the Jericho memorial , which has been in Rümelingen since 1981 in memory of the victims of the Nazi occupation of Luxembourg. In 1960 he was posthumously awarded the Ordre de la Résistance .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hinzert (concentration camp memorial - general strike), Hinzert-Pölert community, Trier-Saarburg district, Rhineland-Palatinate. denkmalprojekt.org, accessed on August 31, 2014 .
  2. ^ Strike 1942. (No longer available online.) Ville de Differdange, formerly in the original ; accessed on August 31, 2014 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.differdange.lu  
  3. ^ Strike of September 2, 1942. Cultural evening on the occasion of the 60th anniversary. Déifferdang magazine. No. 4. p. 13, 2002, archived from the original on July 12, 2007 ; accessed on August 31, 2014 .
  4. ↑ Ali Ruckert: 70 years ago: The strike against the Nazis (2). Newspaper vum Lëtzebuerger Vollek, August 29, 2012, accessed on August 31, 2014 .
  5. ↑ Monument "Jericho" was erected 30 years ago. mywort.lu, June 6, 2011, accessed on August 31, 2014 .
  6. ^ Memorial of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. legilux.public.lu, May 7, 1960, accessed on August 31, 2014 .
personal data
SURNAME Toussaint, Ernest
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Luxembourg boxer
DATE OF BIRTH March 6, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Rumelange
DATE OF DEATH September 3, 1942
Place of death SS special camp in Hinzert