The German occupation of Luxembourg in World War II began in May 1940 after the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg was invaded by Nazi Germany. Although Luxembourg was officially neutral, it was situated at a strategic point at the end of the French Maginot Line. On 10 May 1940, the German Wehrmacht invaded Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands. Luxembourg was initially placed under a military administration, but later became a civilly administrated territory and finally was annexed directly into Germany. The Germans believed Luxembourg to be a Germanic state, and attempted to suppress what they perceived as alien French language and cultural influences. Although some Luxembourgers joined the resistance or collaborated with the Germans, both constituted a minority of the population. As German nationals, from 1942, many Luxembourgers were conscripted into the German military. Nearly 3,500 Luxembourgish Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. The liberation of the country by the Allies began in September 1944, but due to the Ardennes Offensive it was not completed until early 1945.
Jews outside Europe under Axis occupation suffered greatly during World War II.
Aryanization was the Nazi term for the seizure of property from Jews and its transfer to non-Jews, and the forced expulsion of Jews from economic life in Nazi Germany, Axis-aligned states, and their occupied territories. It entailed the transfer of Jewish property into "Aryan" or non-Jewish hands.
Gustav Simon was a Nazi Party official who served as Gauleiter of Gau Moselland from 1931 to 1945 and, from 1940 until 1942, as Chief of Civil Administration in occupied Luxembourg. In this position, he was chiefly responsible for the Holocaust in Luxembourg.
Victor Nicolas Bodson was a socialist Luxembourgish politician and lawyer who held the posts of Minister of Justice, Public Works, and Transport for long periods of time in the 1940s and 1950s, including in exile during World War II, when Luxembourg was occupied by Nazi Germany.
The history of the Jews in Luxembourg dates back to the 1200s. There are roughly 1,200 Jews in Luxembourg, and Jews form one of the largest and most important religious and ethnic minority communities in Luxembourg historically.
Œuvre de secours aux enfants, abbreviated OSE, is a French Jewish humanitarian organization which was founded in Russia in 1912 to help Russian Jewish children. Later it moved to France.
The Sons and Daughters of Jewish Deportees from France is a French association of descendants of Jews deported from or displaced in France during the Nazi German occupation of France (1940–1944), during the Holocaust. Serge Klarsfeld—an academic historian specializing in the fate of Jews in France during World War II—founded the organization in 1979 and continues to serve as its president.
The Holocaust in France was the persecution, deportation, and annihilation of Jews between 1940 and 1944 in occupied France, metropolitan Vichy France, and in Vichy-controlled French North Africa, during World War II. The persecution began in 1940, and culminated in deportations of Jews from France to Nazi concentration camps in Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Poland. The deportation started in 1942 and lasted until July 1944. Of the 340,000 Jews living in metropolitan/continental France in 1940, more than 75,000 were deported to death camps, where about 72,500 were murdered.
The Holocaust in Belgium was the systematic dispossession, deportation, and murder of Jews and Roma in German-occupied Belgium during World War II. Out of about 66,000 Jews in the country in May 1940, around 28,000 were murdered during the Holocaust.
The involvement of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg in World War II began with its invasion by German forces on 10 May 1940 and lasted beyond its liberation by Allied forces in late 1944 and early 1945.
When Luxembourg was invaded and annexed by Nazi Germany in 1940, a national consciousness started to emerge. From 1941 onwards, the first resistance groups formed in secret, operating underground and in defiance of the German occupation. Their covert activities included aiding political refugees and those evading conscription into the German forces, as well as disseminating patriotic leaflets to bolster the Luxembourgish population's spirits.
The Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation was an independent French organization founded by Isaac Schneersohn in 1943 in the town of Grenoble, France during the Second World War to preserve the evidence of Nazi war crimes for future generations. Upon the Liberation of France, the center was moved to Paris. In 2005 it fused with the Mémorial de la Shoah.
The Memorial to the Victims of the Shoah was inaugurated on 17 June 2018 in the city of Luxembourg. The monument commemorates the persecution, deportation and murder of native Jews and those who fled to Luxembourg during the National Socialist dictatorship. The 17th of June 2018 was chosen for the inauguration because 75 years earlier, on the 17th of June 1943, the last deportation train with Jews had left Luxembourg, and the location, Boulevard Roosevelt, because the first synagogue of Luxembourg existed nearby.
The green ticket roundup, also known as the green card roundup, took place on 14 May 1941 during the Nazi occupation of France. The mass arrest started a day after French Police delivered a green card to 6694 foreign Jews living in Paris, instructing them to report for a "status check".
The Luxembourg Synagogue is an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, located on Avenue Monterey, in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg.
The General Union of French Israelites was a body created by the antisemitic French politician Xavier Vallat under the Vichy regime after the Fall of France in World War II. UGIF was created by decree on 29 November 1941 following a German request, for the express purpose of enabling the discovery and classification of Jews in France and isolating them both morally and materially from the rest of the French population. It operated in two zones: the northern zone, chaired by André Baur, and the southern zone, under the chairmanship of Raymond-Raoul Lambert.
The Second French Statute on the Status of Jews, of 2 June 1941, was an anti-semitic law enacted under Vichy France and signed into law by the Head of the French State, Marshal Philippe Pétain. It replaced the first Law on the status of Jews of 3 October 1940. It included an increasingly stringent definition of who was a Jew in France. It specified a legal definition, of the term Jewish race, broadening its criteria for inclusion and extending the scope of the existing professional prohibitions. From that point on, Jews in France became second-class citizens, while they had since 21 September 1791 been full citizens.
The Law of 3 October 1940 on the status of Jews was a law enacted by Vichy France. It provided a legal definition of the expression Jewish race, which was used during the Nazi occupation for the implementation of Vichy's ideological policy of "National Revolution" comprising corporatist and antisemitic racial policies. It also listed the occupations forbidden to Jews meeting the definition. The law was signed by Marshall Philippe Pétain and the main members of his government.
The Law of 4 October 1940 regarding foreign nationals of the Jewish race was a law enacted by the Vichy regime, which authorized and organized the internment of foreign Jews and marked the beginning of the policy of collaboration of the Vichy regime with Nazi Germany's plans for the extermination of the Jews of Europe. This law was published in the Journal officiel de la République française on 18 October 1940.
