„De‘ Walefer Médecher“: strike at the LBA – monument

On 30 August 1942, Gustav Simon, the Head of the Civil Administration in Luxembourg, then occupied by Nazi Germany, imposed compulsory military service for young Luxembourgers born between 1920 and 1924, and subsequently those born in the years 1925, 1926 and 1927. He further announced the conferment of German nationality on the young males thus enlisted, as from the time of their joining the ranks.

In the days that followed, these two decrees provoked strikes throughout the country against this de facto annexation of Luxembourg to the Third Reich. Thus, on 2 September 1942, forty-three female trainee teachers at the teacher training school, the Lehrerinnenbildungsanstalt (LBA), housed in the Château de Walferdange boycotted the classes as a sign of their opposition to the Nazi occupation and the compulsory recruitment of young Luxembourgers, by remaining passively seated in the classrooms and refusing to give the Hitler salute. The young strikers were arrested the following day and subsequently sent to re-education camps run by the Hitler Youth at Marienthal and Altenahr in Germany, where they were held until November-December 1942.

Inaugurated on 5 October 2022, this monument recalls the participation of the trainee teachers in the strike actions that took place at the end of August/beginning of September 1942, and their resistance against the Nazi oppression. Eighty years after the “General Strike”, it pays tribute to the courage shown by them.

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