1942 Luxembourgish general strike

A nationwide general strike, originating in Wiltz, paralysed the country and led to the occupying German authorities responding violently by sentencing 21 strikers to death.

Furthermore, on August 30, 1942, Gustav Simon announced that all Luxembourger males born between 1920 and 1927 were to be conscripted into the Wehrmacht to fight against the Allies.

They were gradually joined by other local workers, among them the employees of IDEAL Lederwerke Wiltz, a large industrial tannery belonging to the Adler & Oppenheimer group before "aryanisation".

[citation needed] In Differdange, news of the strike spread throughout the workforce by word of mouth, and increased in intensity on September 1.

At 10 a.m., German authorities reacted and designated who they held as responsible for the situation: Jean-Paul Schneider, Nicolas Betz, Alphonse Weets, Robert Mischo, René Angelsberg, and Ernest Toussaint.

Twenty strike leaders were summarily tried by a special tribunal (Standgericht) and sentenced to death and transferred to the Hinzert concentration camp where they were shot and buried in an unmarked grave.

290 high school children, boys and girls, were arrested and sent to re-education camps in Germany, as were 40 ARBED trainees and 7 young postmen.

[6] A series of black on red posters were then posted throughout Luxembourg announcing the death of the strikers as a consequence of the strike, bearing the names, occupation, and residency of each victim.