POST Luxembourg Commemorates 78th Anniversary of Postal Worker Strike

To commemorate the 78th anniversary of the Luxembourg postal workers' strike against Nazi occupation, POST Luxembourg held a commemorative ceremony on Thursday.

Yesterday, Thursday 3 September 2020, on the occasion of the 78th anniversary of this strike, the Amicale de POST Luxembourg held a ceremony in front of the commemorative plaque "To our Heroes and Martyrs" (A nos Héros et Martyrs), installed in the entrance hall of POST Technologies at Cloche d'Or, and presenting "St George slaying the dragon” (St Georges terrassant le dragon), a bronze sculpture by Auguste Trémont.

The commemorative ceremony, held in compliance with sanitary measures and therefore with a limited number of guests, took place in the presence of Franz Fayot, Minister of the Economy, Simone Beissel, alderwoman of the City of Luxembourg, members of the families of the victims, the Steering Committee for the Remembrance of the Resistance and members of the management and the Board of Directors of POST Luxembourg. The ceremony closed with the national anthem "Ons Heemecht", performed by Georges Schmit, former postman and member of the Amicale de POST Luxembourg.

Background

On Sunday 30 August 1942, Gauleiter Simon made public the decree imposing compulsory military service in the Wehrmacht on Luxembourgers born between 1920 and 1924. Organised by the unions and resistance movements, a strike against the forcible recruitment of some 15,000 Luxembourgers by the Nazi occupiers began in Wiltz before reaching the capital and the south of the country.

Postal workers Nicky Konz and Jean Schroeder, both aged 28, were the first to be arrested on the territory of the City of Luxembourg. Following this movement of revolt, death sentences were handed down by the special courts, followed by immediate executions. Apart from the postal workers Nicky Konz and Jean Schroeder, executed on 3 and 4 September 1942 at the Hinzert concentration camp, nine members of the PTT personnel who, with many others, went on strike at the central post office in Luxembourg City, were brought before the drumhead court-martial and were sentenced, along with 37 other Luxembourgish protesters, to various penalties. A total of 22 postal workers were deported to concentration camps, six of whom were killed. A further ten postal workers were imprisoned, two of whom lost their lives.