Inauguration of the monument in memory of Shoah victims

Photo: Chris Karaba

A new monument commemorating the victims of the Shoah in Luxembourg was inaugurated on Sunday.



The statue is near the Boulevard Roosevelt in Luxembourg City, on the spot of the first synagogue in Luxembourg.



A plaque commemorating the 658 Luxembourg Jews that were deported to concentration camps between 1941 and 1943 was also inaugurated at the central station.



The inauguration took place exactly 75 years after the last train deporting Luxembourg Jews to the concentration camps left the Grand Duchy.



The event was attended, among others, by the president of the Israelite Consistory of Luxembourg Albert Aflalo, prime minister Xavier Bettel, the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, the mayor of Luxembourg City Lydie Polfer as well as the Chief Rabbi of Luxembourg Alain Nacache.



In their speeches Polfer, Aflalo and Bettel said in unison that such abominations could never be repeated.



The sculpture of the Franco-Israeli artist Shelomo Selinger is there to commemorate the inhumanity of the Nazis towards the Jewish population and to help ensure that such crimes can never be repeated.



"We need to keep the memory alive and pass it on to the next generation," Polfer said right at the beginning of her speech.



Monument honouring the victims of the holocaust

Photo: Chris Karaba

She explained that the country's first synagogue was located on Boulevard Roosevelt. The building was built in 1823 by the then rather small Jewish community in Luxembourg.

It quickly became too small and in 1894 another, bigger synagogue opened its doors on the corner between Rue Notre-Dame and Rue Aldringen. This second synagogue was first defiled and destroyed and finally demolished in 1943.



Aflalo expressed his satisfaction at the fact that additionally to the government's official apology, a memorial now also commemorates the suffering of the Jewish community.

The apology that came in response to the findings of the Artuso report – which examined the response of the Luxembourgish government in the face of Nazi antisemitic persecutions – as well as the memorial are for Aflalo a sign of the "final defeat of barbarism."



For Bettel, "remembrance is our duty" and should be passed on to future generations.



Bettel said he was proud that the government had made the decision to apologise to the Jewish community, after the Artuso report revealed that the civil administration had not been as passive during the occupation as is often said it was.



He also said he was proud that a Shoah Foundation was created in addition to the Committee for the Memory of the Second World War and that the memorial was finally erected.



He said he was ashamed, however, that it took so long for the project to materialise, almost 75 years after the war.