Luxembourgers tell of being swallowed by Nazi Reich
During the Second World War, Germany fully occupied the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and pursued its social and political integration into the Nazi state under the "Heim ins Reich" policy, or ‘back home into the Reich’.
The history of the Grand Duchy's powerlessness and Nazi oppression between 1940 and 1944 is told in a roughly two-hour documentary available for rent on Vimeo. The 2004 work Heim ins Reich: Wéi Lëtzebuerg sollt preisesch ginn (Heim ins Reich: How Luxembourg was to become German) collects witness accounts of the German occupation and, in doing so, presents one of the clearest pictures of Luxembourg’s experience during the war.
Berlin's idea was to ‘Germanise’ lands the Nazis held to be nominally part of the greater German Reich, either by replacing the local population or culturally assimilating populations deemed close enough to German. Luxembourg fell into the latter category, unlike the ethnic Slavs of Poland and the USSR who were to be forced out.
Once part of the Holy Roman Empire, speaking a language adjacent to German and unable to resist militarily, Luxembourg was quickly channelled toward integration into Hitler’s Reich. What followed was an era deeply felt by all of Luxembourg’s inhabitants.
On the eve of the war, Luxembourg had enjoyed a new-found sense of patriotism. The shock of the First World War and the looming threat of Hitler’s Germany had imbued Luxembourgers with a new sense of identity. But on 10 May 1940, German troops rolled into the Grand Duchy after facing only token resistance.
They had more than just conquest in mind.
Heim ins Reich takes great care to present its historical narrative, complete with rare footage of the German occupation, old German radio broadcasts and witness accounts by Luxembourgers who were there to witness it. Astounding footage of Nazi rallies on Place de Théâtre and collaborators goose stepping towards the Gare Centrale rattle with their historic proximity and sense of total overlordship.
The documentary’s emphasis on witness testimony proves crucial to the story. Everyday Luxembourgers - all with the aspect of a kind, elderly neighbour one might meet in any village – describe the creeping totalitarianism and escalating pressure.
Gustav Simon, the short and shouty Nazi regional administrator of Luxembourg, made it a policy to make their lives unbearable. Luxembourgers had their names Germanised (Roger became Rüdiger), while the country's Jews were stripped of their jobs, fortunes and property before being systematically removed to concentration camps.
Many Jews under the new Nazi yoke had emigrated to the Grand Duchy as a belligerent Germany expanded its influence across Europe in the years preceding the war. Most came from Austria following the 1938 'Anschluss' fusing it with its larger neighbour.
Josy Schlang and Julien Meyer, two Jewish survivors of the German occupation, tell of their oppression and deportation. Fellow Luxembourgers recount helping Jewish people cross the border, their regrets of not having been able to do more, and their resistance to Nazi ethnic discrimination.
Heim ins Reich also interviews members of the former Luxembourgish resistance, a clandestine organisation which at every turn opposed the Germanisation of the Grand Duchy. A major source of friction came from the forceful conscription of Luxembourgers to fight on the Eastern Front against the Soviets. Thousands of Luxembourgers were sent to the Eastern Front, ‘young boys who sometimes had never been further than the next village’, the documentary tells us.
These recruits, who loathed the Germans as much as the Soviets did, tell of how they were transported thousands of kilometres to spend months in snowy trenches during the greatest conflict in human history. Their witness accounts of meeting Russians on the Eastern Front make for another aspect of an otherwise secret history.
Heim ins Reich: Wéi Lëtzebuerg sollt preisesch ginn paints a uniquely illustrative picture of a story otherwise rarely heard. It’s not just a collage of old black-and-white war footage, although these clips of the Grand Duchy during the occupation are powerful in their own right. It’s a truly remarkable piece of Luxembourgish history that dutifully keeps memories alive which otherwise risk being forgotten by a rapidly modernising country.
While the documentary has English-language narration and subtitles, the witness testimonies are, thankfully, all in the evocative Luxembourgish of their speakers.
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