Credit: MAEE
On Thursday 31 January 2020, François Bausch, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, represented the Luxembourg government in Słońsk, Poland, at the commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the Sonnenburg massacre.
On the night of 30-31 January 1945, an SS detachment brutally murdered 819 prisoners in what was then the German prison at Sonnenburg. Among the victims were 91 young Luxembourgish men, who had been forcibly conscripted but refused to serve the military machine of Nazi dictatorship.
This place, then called "Sonnenburg" and now Słońsk, is considered one of the most important places in the contemporary history of Luxembourg and in the collective memory of Luxembourgers. Together with the Holocaust crime against humanity committed against the Jews of Luxembourg, the Sonnenburg massacre was the most significant crime perpetrated against Luxembourgers during the Second World War.
In his speech during the commemoration, François Bausch notably declared that “all things considered and even if these are specific historical contexts, the importance of the impact of the Sonnenburg massacre for the collective memory of Luxembourgers can be compared to that of Katyń for the historical memory of our Polish friends. Like the Polish, the Luxembourgers resisted the yoke of Nazi occupation and faced German repression [and] paid a very high price for their courage and their righteousness".
He added: "The Sonnenburg massacre was all the more cruel since in January 1945, at the approach of the Red Army troops, even the most fanatic of the Nazi executioners had to realise that the war was irretrievably lost for the Third Reich. For a nation as small as Luxembourg, the Sonnenburg massacre was all the more dramatic because it was an attack on the substance and the future of our country”.
On behalf of the Luxembourg government, François Bausch thanked the people of Słońsk and the Polish authorities for their commitment to keep the memory of the Luxembourg martyrs alive on the spot where the Sonnenburg massacre was committed. He commented: "We will never forget the sacrifice of our young Luxembourgers, victims of a barbaric ideology who sacrificed themselves for their homeland! [...] I bow to the memory of the victims of the Sonnenburg massacre and to that of the victims of Nazism from all nations”.
François Bausch, accompanied by the Luxembourg ambassador to Poland, Conrad Bruch, and the Honorary Consul in Poznań, Paweł Kuraszkiewicz, went on to lay wreaths in front of the monument to the memory of the victims of the Sonnenburg massacre and in the Słońsk cemetery. On this occasion, Minister Bausch also visited the Museum of Martyrology in Słońsk before attending a reception at the invitation of Mayor Janusz Krzyśkow.
