Historical agreement: Luxembourg compensates Holocaust victims Israel today

One of the only countries in Europe that has not compensated Jews so far will undertake to return funds • Details of the agreement that will be revealed - the result of an effort of US-mediated negotiations

• The Terezin concentration camp in the Czech Republic, to which many Luxembourgers were deported, in 2016

  Photography: 

  Getty Images

Historical day:

The Luxembourg government will sign an agreement tomorrow (Wednesday) in which the Duchy of Europe will undertake to pay compensation to Holocaust survivors, work to return Jewish property and perpetuate the persecution of Jews during the German occupation. 

Details of the agreement, which was formulated in accelerated negotiations that have taken place over the past year between the governments of Luxembourg, the United States, Israel and the World Jewish Organization for the Restitution of Property (ILR), will be published at the signing ceremony.

The historic agreement, which is a tribute to late and symbolic justice, is one of the recent achievements of the Trump administration that has worked, among other things, to advance the issue of returning Jewish property looted during World War II.

The agreement was supposed to be signed about two weeks ago.

However, after the events of the Capitol on the 6th of the month, the heads of the Luxembourg government decided to wait until the new government took office.

Luxembourg, a neutral country, was occupied by Germany on May 10, 1940. At the beginning of World War II, about 4,000 Jews lived in Luxembourg, about a third of whom managed to escape from Germany.

The Germans appointed a local governor on their behalf, who was a member of the Luxembourg Nazi Party (a German minority lives in the Duchy, and German is one of the official languages ​​of the country).

Despite the Nazis' efforts to persuade the local population, to voluntarily annex the Reich, the Luxembourgers showed vigorous opposition to the Nazi occupation.

This resistance did not include active assistance to the Jews.

However, the majority of the Luxembourg population generally refrained from participating in the persecution of the Jews.

Thus, the work of demolishing the main synagogue in the capital was entrusted to an Italian architect, as the locals refused to demolish the building. 

In September 1940, four months after the occupation, the racist Nuremberg Laws were enacted in the Duchy.

A year later, the occupation authorities banned the immigration of Jews.

By then, some 2,500 Jews had managed to leave the country, although some had been arrested and deported to concentration camps. 

From October 1941, the Germans began deporting the remnants of Luxembourg Jews to Auschwitz, Terezin, and Lodz.

The deportees were first concentrated in a monastery in the north of the country, and from there were sent in shipments to their deaths.

Although the Luxembourg government enacted a law on the restitution of property expropriated by the Nazis, many matters remained open, including the issue of dormant bank accounts of Nazi persecuted people and victims, and compensation for Jews who did not own property or did not have Luxembourg citizenship. 

R.M. Luxembourg, Xavier Batal - who is himself of Jewish descent, has in recent years acted to recognize Luxembourg's role in the persecution of Jews.