MemoShoah Luxembourg A.S.B.L.

Founded in 2013, the non-profit association MemoShoah Luxembourg aims at keeping alive the memory of the systematic extermination of Europe’s Jews by Nazi Germany. This unprecedented crime against humanity is called Shoah. MemoShoah seeks to achieve its goals through information and awareness-raising as well as by initiating and promoting educational projects, research and publications and by supporting subject-related cultural projects. The association also accompanies municipalities in their commemorative work regarding the fate of their Jewish residents who became Shoah victims.

In Luxembourg, MemoShoah wants to contribute in particular to enhancing the understanding of the mechanisms that led to the systematic murder of almost six million European Jews by Nazi Germany - this also with the aim of arming young people to identify hate-promoting language against minorities at an early stage and not to adopt it.

The Shoah can serve as a historical example of what can happen when there is a complete reversal of universal humanistic values in a society. That is why MemoShoah Luxembourg also supports initiatives to prevent and combat racism, anti-Semitism and any other form of discrimination against minorities. Furthermore, MemoShoah consistently opposes all attempts to downplay, relativise or deny the Shoah.

Shoah

The term "Shoah" originally means catastrophe or disaster in Hebrew. Today, the term is used specifically for the physical extermination of almost six million European Jews by Nazi Germany. This extermination did not only take place in Auschwitz-Birkenau or the other death camps. Millions of Jews were also systematically murdered or executed by the Nazi regime through shooting, malnutrition, disease, slave labour or medical experiments. The Nazi regime's so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" did not envisage the survival of Europe's Jewish population, not even that of the so-called "labour Jews". There could be no place for Jews in an "Aryan" Europe envisioned by the Nazi regime.

In general usage, the terms "Shoah" and "Holocaust" are synonymous. The term "Holocaust" comes from the Greek word holókaustos and literally means "completely burnt". In order to avoid that the murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany only refers to Auschwitz-Birkenau and the other death camps in which people were first killed by gas and then burned in crematoria, MemoShoah prefers the term "Shoah".

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Créée en 2013, l’association sans but lucratif MemoShoah Luxembourg a pour vocation d’entretenir la mémoire de la Shoah et de soutenir des actions concrètes visant le même objectif.

L'association soutient, d’un côté, des initiatives visant à informer et sensibiliser le grand public, et initie et promeut de l’autre des projets pédagogiques, la recherche sur la Shoah, des publications ainsi que des projets culturels. L’association accompagne également les communes dans leur travail de mémoire sur la Shoah.

MemoShoah souhaite contribuer à faire connaître les mécanismes qui ont conduit à l’assassinat systématique de près de six millions de Juifs européens par l’Allemagne nazie. Ce travail vise en particulier à sensibiliser les jeunes au Luxembourg, pour leur permettre d’identifier très tôt le langage attisant la haine contre les minorités et de le rejeter.

La Shoah illustre tragiquement ce qui peut arriver lorsqu’une société se détourne complètement des valeurs humanistes universelles. C’est pourquoi MemoShoah Luxembourg soutient aussi les initiatives visant à prévenir et à combattre le racisme, l’antisémitisme et toute autre forme de discrimination et d’exclusion. MemoShoah s’engage résolument contre toute tentative de minimiser, de relativiser ou de nier la Shoah.