Resistance and Deportation Memorial

The cross in front of you is made of wood taken from the camp where the men buried here were held.

It is called the Hinzert Cross. Hinzert was an SS camp in the Hunsrück, across the German border, and Luxembourgers were sent there in numbers during the occupation — for resisting conscription into the German army, for organising, for refusing. Eighty-two of them were executed, at Hinzert itself and at the Klingelpütz prison in Cologne. Their bodies were brought back here after the war and buried in this cemetery.

The man who built it was Joseph Colabianchi, a carpenter, who had been a prisoner at Hinzert himself. He shaped the camp's beams and assembled them into this, and it was raised first at Hinzert, at the end of 1945, over the graves there. Then the dead were brought home, and on the 8th of March 1946 the cross was set up over them here.

In 1969 the ground around it was laid out again, and a bronze figure was added — a seated man, drawn in on himself. It is called The Political Prisoner, and the sculptor was Lucien Wercollier, who had spent two years in Hinzert and then in the camp at Lublin. Two survivors, then, made the two things standing here.

In 1974 the site was declared a national monument, and given the name it carries now. Luxembourg holds its national day of remembrance here each October.