The forgotten Eastern workers in Luxembourg

The letter is written in Cyrillic script, in dark ink. The lettering seems erratic. Enlarged, it hangs on a wall in the Centre de Documentation sur les Migrations Humaines (CDMH) in Dudelange. A former Ukrainian forced labourer writes to another: "Do you remember? Why was this done to us? What was our fault?" and circles a tear that has dripped onto the paper.

The letter is one of the documents and material sources that have found their way to the historian and researcher at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) Inna Ganschow in recent years. In November 2025, her book Keiner weinte, es gab keine Tränen mehr (which translates into 'Nobody cries, no tears were left') won the Luxembourg Book Prize in the "Non-Fiction" category at the Walfer Bicherdeeg. Anyone hearing or seeing the title for the first time might expect a fictional novel, but the subtitle, Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian forced labourers in Luxembourg during the Second World War, makes it clear: This is about a chapter of Luxembourg's history that very few people have shed light on to date.

"I wanted to read this book, but nobody had written it – so I had to write it myself, " says Ganschow. As a native of Kazakhstan who migrated to Western Europe herself, she enjoys dealing with migration movements from Eastern Europe. The fact that she came across the story of around 4.000 so-called Eastern workers in Luxembourg – more than half from Ukraine, around a quarter from Russia and others from Belarus and Poland – was more of a coincidence.