POST Luxembourg Commemorates Anniversary of 1942 General Strike

Today, Tuesday 31 August 2021, marks the 79th anniversary of the 1942 Luxembourgish General Strike against Nazi occupation during the Second World War.

On this occasion, the Amicale de POST Luxembourg held a ceremony on Monday in front of the commemorative plaque "A nos Héros et Martyrs" (to our heroes and martyrs), installed in the entrance hall of POST Technologies at Cloche d'Or, and presenting "St Georges terrassant le dragon" (St George slaying the dragon), a bronze sculpture by Auguste Trémont.

The commemorative ceremony took place under the CovidCheck regime with a limited number of guests, notably in the presence of family members of the victims as well as members of the management and the Board of Directors of POST Luxembourg and the Amicale de POST Luxembourg.

The opening speech of Mike Orazi, President of the Amicale de POST Luxembourg, preceded speeches by Hjoerdis Stahl, Director of POST Courrier and Deputy Director-General of POST Luxembourg, Serge Allegrezza, President of the Board of Directors of POST Luxembourg, and Guy Dockendorf from the Fondation Nationale de la Résistance. 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 around 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 Nicky Konz and Jean Schroeder, executed on 3 and 4 September 1942 at the Hinzert concentration camp, nine staff members of what was then known as PTT Luxembourg, who had gone 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.