Memories of a generation: Looking back on the Second World War

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It was exactly 80 years ago today, on 16 December 1944, that the German Wehrmacht launched the Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, in northern Luxembourg and eastern Belgium. Over 10,000 American soldiers lost their lives in the final battle against Nazi Germany and 500 Luxembourg civilians did not survive the attack either, which lasted until the end of January 1945. It would go down in history as one of the bloodiest of the Second World War.

But it was also 80 years ago that Luxembourg was officially liberated from the German occupier by the Allies, in several stages. On 9 September 1944, the first Americans entered the country via Pétange – the first city was free. The capital followed and five days later the entire Grand Duchy was in American hands. The Nazis had been successfully driven out – at least that was the hope of the population. Then, on 16 December, came the final German counterattack mentioned above. Shortly before Christmas, towns such as Diekirch and Ettelbrück in the north of Luxembourg were free again.

The last witnesses

However, the Second World War only really came to an end when the Germans signed the surrender document on 9 May 1945, almost five years after the National Socialist regime had seized power in Europe. The generation that directly witnessed the atrocities of the Nazis is that of our grandparents. Only a few witnesses are still alive to tell of the events of that time and how they experienced them first-hand. This makes it all the more important to listen to those that still can, to record their stories and to remember what happened back then so that history is never forgotten.

One person who still remembers the years 1940 to 1945 well is 97-year-old Léon Letsch. When the war reached Luxembourg in May 1940, his family's life changed abruptly. German officers were billeted in the  house of the family several times; the soldiers used their café as a retreat between battles. While Letsch himself was still too young to serve in the Wehrmacht, his brother Raymond was drafted. "He first spent six months in the Reich Labour Service in Bettembourg, then went to basic soldier training in Itzehoe in Germany, " recalls Letsch.

After serving in the Wehrmacht in several countries, Raymond was arrested by his own ranks for "treasonable activities" and taken to the Wehrmacht prison in Torgau. He spent a whole 14 months there, awaiting his planned execution, before he was "released" back into the Wehrmacht due to a lack of witnesses. The Luxembourger was never to see his family again, as he died on 26 January 1945 from a war wound in the battle between the Soviet Red Army and the German Wehrmacht for Budapest.

"It was only after the war that we learnt that the son of a friend of my father's had betrayed my brother because he thought nothing would happen to him as a soldier of the German Wehrmacht. He had been caught by the Germans at a meeting of a Luxembourg sub-organisation in Mamer and had claimed that my brother had also been there. That's why Raymond ended up in prison, " Letsch explains the events.

With a trembling voice, the 97-year-old recounts the difficult times his family had to endure during the war, but every now and then he also smiles, remembering the good moments when the Allies liberated Luxembourg. "I knew some English and often played translator, " says Letsch with a grin. He went hunting with the Americans, looked over their shoulders as they played cards in the café and drank "Schokelaskaffi" (coffee with chocolate) with them. However, these happy memories do not make up for the terrible images of the war: "Those were hard years. Even today, I often can't sleep because things still haunt me."

The 96-year-old Marianne Reuter-Schmitz was already a teenager when the Nazis invaded Luxembourg and experienced the consequences in her own everyday life. Instead of going to school, she had to work in a factory producing men's shirts. Her father, an active member of the "Lëtzebuerger Vollekslegio'n" resistance group, was arrested and her brother, born in 1924, was conscripted. "When he was sent to the front, my uncle helped to hide him, " recalls Reuter-Schmitz. However, the first acquaintance with whom her brother stayed was caught while the fugitive was lying under the floor. After five months, the second family who took him in were too afraid for their own safety and sent him away. Only the third helpers, with whom the deserter was finally able to stay, had themselves lost a son in Russia, so they understood the family's suffering.

"But my uncle was betrayed and sent to the Hinzert camp, where he died, " says Reuter-Schmitz. Together with a few friends, the now 96-year-old wrote the book Une classe de lycée dans la tourmente 1940–1947, in which she recorded these and many other memories. "My father spent 30 months in the concentration camp in Natzweiler and when he came back, he was so physically and health-wise damaged that he was never able to work again, " says the senior citizen. Her later father-in-law was also deported to the Mauthausen concentration camp, as he was in the resistance together with Reuter-Schmitz's father and a third work colleague.

"I went to Natzweiler every year after the war, because the memories of that time have always stayed with me, " says the 96-year-old. Another contemporary witness, Ely Keipes-Remy, did not lose a loved one, but still has to swallow her tears when she thinks about the Second World War. Born in 1935, she was just five when the Nazis invaded her homeland. Nevertheless, she remembers the many times when she had to run into the forest with her bag and baggage because firebombs were falling again. "The church and the girls' school were completely burnt down, " says Keipes-Remy.

In their home near the Gantenbeinsmillen swimming pool at the time, the family and their four children slept on mattresses in the living room so that they could get to the cellar or out of the house more quickly if the Germans dropped bombs again. Keipes-Remy's father was sent several times to the municipal Villa Pauly, which at the time served as the headquarters of the German Gestapo (Secret State Police), because he had helped to hide a boy from the Nazis.

For a long time, the now 89-year-old was unable to hear sirens and even today she gets emotional when she thinks back to the war. "I think we were still too young to understand everything, but the time left its mark on us all, " says the senior citizen. Like her, Josée Juncker-Schuler, born in 1939, and Gilberte Schockweiler-Dondelinger, born in 1933, also remember many things from the war. While some of their close relatives were relocated or deported to concentration camps, Schockweiler-Dondelinger's family got off relatively lightly. "My mother was originally from Fuhren and travelled to her parents' house every few months to bring vegetables and fruit from the garden there so that we had something to eat at home, " recalls the 91-year-old.

During the Batlle of the Bulge in December, relatives from the north fled to the family home because it was safer there than in the Ösling. "So many bombs fell back then that the dead were blown out of the graves and lay all over the street, " reports Schockweiler-Dondelinger, who thankfully never had to see this sight herself. She only remembers a few anecdotes, such as the bananas that the American soldiers distributed after the liberation, or how entire families had had to leave the country involuntarily: "Ten houses in our street were occupied by Germans and the gendarmerie (local police) opposite where we lived was also in Nazi hands during the war."

Juncker-Schuler's family also risked resettlement because not only her father defied the Nazis' rules, her grandmother also had some "objections" to the Nazi regime: "When we were supposed to hang up the German flag, she got a broomstick, put the flag on it and said it was just good enough for it." Like so many Luxembourgers, her whole family was anti-German and actively opposed the occupying forces. "I remember that my father owned an old DKW cabriolet. Fearing that the Germans would confiscate his car, he had a mechanic remove parts so that it would no longer drive. When the war was over, the parts were reinstalled and the car belonged to the family without interruption."

Marcelle Hannes-Lamesch often thinks back to the acts of the Luxembourg rebellion, however small or large they may have been. Born in 1925, she was a teenager when the war broke out, but still knew ways to defend herself against the occupiers: "Our teachers were all replaced by Germans. My friends and I were cheeky and objected at every opportunity. We saw that as our little resistance, " says the 99-year-old. There was also resistance in the family and neighbourhood, for example when one of the boys from the street fled from the Wehrmacht, everyone kept quiet because no one would have betrayed the Luxembourger. "He came back at some point as an English soldier and we took him under our wing, " recalls Hannes-Lamesch.

The ones no one spoke of

She herself was sent to a labour camp in the Eifel during her last year in highschool: "It was disgusting. In order for us to be drafted, our final exams were brought forward and once we got there, we had to salute the German flag and sing Hitler songs every morning." The young Luxembourger was lucky, however, as she "only" had to help in other households and on farms, while others suffered a far worse fate: "We girls were there alone and all of us were of reproductive age. Many soldiers had sex with Luxembourg women 'for the Führer'. Many children were born afterwards who didn't even know where they came from."

She herself almost died of an appendectomy during her time in the labour camp, as there was no disinfectant anywhere, but survived and today knows who else narrowly escaped death: "The local group leader sent his wife to the hospital every day to make sure that I was still there and that I was really ill. A doctor promised me that he would hide me and the nurses were all very helpful. Today I'm sure that one of them wasn't a nurse at all, but a Jew who was hidden like that. Those were the heroic deeds of the war." Heroic deeds, but also fates that must not be forgotten, as all those still alive emphasise, because they would not wish what they experienced 80 years ago on anyone – not even their greatest enemy.