history & pedagogy

Souvenirs from the Ravensbrück concentration camp

Undated, different materials on cardboard, 15x10,4cm, MNRDH.

The prisoners try to raise the morale of their fellow prisoners through gifts and to show that despite their dehumanisation by the Nazis, they are still human beings with feelings, fears, dreams and desires.

On this card, Yvonne Useldinger, a communist resistance fighter detained at Ravensbrück, recorded some memories of this solidarity among prisoners.

Forged identity document

Côte d'Or 14.5.1943, various materials, 15x11,2cm, MNRDH.

To go completely underground, you need a new identity.

Luxembourgish resistance groups like the PI-Men provide draft dodgers, deserters and political refugees with false passports and IDs before they are taken across the border to France or Belgium

Poster "Eure Sprache sei Deutsch"

Luxembourg 7.8.1940, printed paper, 60,5x85,5cm, MNRDH.

With posters such as "Eure Sprache sei Deutsch" (your language is German), Gauleiter Gustav Simon tries to convince the Luxembourgers that they are Germans.

Call for a "general strike"

Josy Fellens, Brussels 1942, printed paper, MNRDH.

Call for a "general strike" against the planned forced recruitment of Luxemburgers into the German armed forces.

Printed by Luxembourg resistance groups in Brussels, the call was to be smuggled into Luxembourg and distributed.

By mistake, the word "Generalstreik" is replaced by "maj." when printed. The term "maj." for majuscule was actually intended as a note to the printer to write "Generalstreik" in capital letters.

Memories of the Invasion of Luxembourg

France/Luxembourg 10.5.1940-27.9.1940, printed paper, 10,2x6x0,4cm, MNRDH.

After the invasion of the German Wehrmacht, the population of the south of the country is evacuated to France or inland.

Setty Garçons, who lives in Esch/Alzette, goes to France.

She records the time of the evacuation in her diary.

"The Political Prisoners" by Jean Daligault

Hinzert 1942/43, wood, 10,8x6,2x2,2cm, MNRDH.

The wooden sculpture "The Political Prisoners" by the French resistance fighter Jean Daligault shows two prisoners standing in the roll call area, tied back to back as punishment.

Daligault donated the sculpture to the Luxembourg artist Lucien Wercollier, who took up the motif again in his own artworks after the war.

Néckel Spielmann's prosthesis

Buchenwald 1944, different materials (aluminium, leather), 88x20x13cm, MNRDH.

Prosthesis made by Néckel Spielmann in Buchenwald concentration camp.

In August 1944, Spielmann's leg was amputated as a result of an American bombardment of the Gustloff factory near the camp.

Luxembourgish fellow prisoners, including Jhemp Schmit and Gust Schaffner, secretly made this prosthesis for him from aluminium and other materials.

Blanket from the Kriegshilfsdienst

Hermsdorf 1945, cloth cover, 187,3x141cm, MNRDH.

From this blanket from the Kriegshilfsdienst (KHD), a French prisoner of war makes a backpack for Marie Bonichaux, a Luxembourgish forced recruit, which she uses to travel home to Luxembourg after her liberation by the Americans.

Jehovah's Witnesses in the camp in Bad Flinsberg

Bad Flinsberg, date and photographer unknown, photograph, 6x7,5cm, MNRDH.

As ideological opponents of the Nazi regime, Jehovah's Witness Ketty Federspiel and her six children were resettled to Leubus and later to Bad Flinsberg and Wartha on 25/26 September 1942. This photo shows Ketty and her daughter Maria on kitchen duty in camp 116 in Bad Flinsberg.