Memorial · Gare & Hollerich

Deportation Memorial

The little station at Hollerich from which the occupier sent away a generation — the forced conscripts and the resettled families — and, since 1975, the country's memorial to them, in slate, sandstone and three crosses beside three stars of David.

This is a small suburban station, one stop out from the main one, and between 1942 and 1944 it was the worst address in Luxembourg. The occupiers used its platform as a collecting point. From here the young men of the classes of 1920 to 1927, conscripted by force into the German army and the labour service, were sent to the front; from here whole families who were "politically undesirable" were put on trains to be resettled in the east of Germany, their houses given to others. The Jews of Luxembourg were deported from the goods station at Bonnevoie, a little further along the line. The pavement stones on the path to the monument were taken from in front of this station: the people walked over them on the way to the trains.

The memorial beside the station building was the deportees' own idea. In April 1975 the city branch of the forced conscripts' association resolved to build one "to commemorate the calvary of Luxembourg's youth under the Nazi occupation"; the railway gave the land, a public subscription paid the 200,000 francs, and the resister and artist Lé Tanson designed it. Two slabs of Éislek slate stand for those who came home; the block of Ernzen sandstone, from the Gutland, for those who did not; the red stones of the wall behind come from the Minett and the pebbles from the Moselle, so that the whole country is present. The cast plaque records 2,906 Luxembourgers of those seven year-groups who fell, were shot, died of privation or were never found, and 65 deportees who died in exile. It was unveiled on the 5th of October 1975, a date chosen between the first resettlement of September 1942 and the departure of the first conscripts on the 18th of October, and the street was renamed the Rue de la Déportation the same day. Only three crosses stood on the stone that day; the Jewish community asked to be remembered too, and on the 21st of February 1976 three stars of David were unveiled beside them.

Inside the station building is the Mémorial de la Déportation, the small museum and research centre on forced conscription. Go in if it is open. The trains still pass the platform.