Luxembourg’s Artuso Report and the Reckoning with Wartime Collaboration

In February 2015, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg quietly released a document that would profoundly reshape its understanding of the Second World War. The 190‑page historical study, authored by historian Vincent Artuso and now widely known simply as the “Artuso Report”, examined Luxembourg’s state policy towards Jews between 1933 and 1941. Its conclusions were stark: far from being a purely passive victim of Nazi occupation, Luxembourg’s state administration had, in specific and consequential ways, collaborated with the persecution and exclusion of Jews and, ultimately, with their deportation.

For a country that had long emphasised its resistance, its suffering under occupation, and the forced conscription of its citizens into the Wehrmacht, this represented a major shift in national self‑perception. The report not only laid bare the role of ministers, bureaucrats and local officials in anti‑Jewish measures; it also set in motion a political and moral reckoning that led to a formal parliamentary apology, new commemorative practices and a reconfiguration of public memory.

This article sets out the historical background, content and impact of the Artuso Report, and situates it within a broader European pattern of late confrontations with complicity in Nazi crimes.

Jews in Luxembourg Before the War

To understand the significance of Luxembourg’s wartime choices, it is necessary to begin with the country’s Jewish community on the eve of the Second World War.

Jewish presence in Luxembourg can be traced back to the Middle Ages, but the modern community took shape in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the 1920s and 1930s, Luxembourg’s Jews comprised both long‑settled families and more recent arrivals, particularly from Germany and eastern Europe. The community was relatively small but socially and economically integrated.

Demographic data from the inter‑war years show that:

• In 1927, approximately 1,771 people of Jewish origin lived in Luxembourg.
• By 1935, the Jewish population had risen to around 3,144, of whom roughly 870 held Luxembourg nationality and the rest were foreign Jews, predominantly German and Polish.
• By 1940, on the eve of the German invasion, around 3,700 Jews were living in the Grand Duchy, about one per cent of the total population.

The sharp rise between 1930 and 1935 was driven above all by refugees from Nazi Germany. For many, Luxembourg appeared to offer a haven: a small, relatively liberal neighbour where life could be rebuilt and danger escaped. Yet even before the outbreak of war, Luxembourgish authorities were uneasy about this influx. They worried about economic burdens, social tensions and the political ramifications of hosting large numbers of refugees from the Reich.

This ambivalence towards refugees would prove critical once Nazi antisemitic policies escalated and, later, when Germany occupied the country.

Occupation and the Traditional Narrative

Germany invaded Luxembourg on 10 May 1940. The country, neutral and militarily weak, surrendered within a day. The Grand Duchess and the legitimate government fled first to France, then to London and Canada, joining the Allied camp in exile.

Within Luxembourg itself, the power vacuum was filled initially by a body known as the Administrative Commission, made up of senior civil servants and local dignitaries. Over time, German military rule gave way to a German civil administration, and in 1942 Luxembourg was formally annexed to the Third Reich. German authorities regarded Luxembourgers as ethnic Germans; they banned the use of French, suppressed national symbols and introduced compulsory military service.

In the decades that followed the war, Luxembourg’s dominant narrative was one of victimhood and resistance. Public commemoration emphasised three themes above all:

1. The courage of the resistance movement.
2. The suffering of ordinary Luxembourgers under occupation, including harsh repression, arrests and executions.
3. The injustice of forced conscription, which saw more than 10,000 young Luxembourgish men drafted into the German army.

These elements were not imaginary; they reflected genuine experiences of oppression and courage. However, this focus left little room for a detailed examination of how Luxembourgish institutions had behaved towards the country’s Jews, or towards the thousands of Jewish refugees who had sought safety there.

For many years, the line taken by some historians and commentators was that anti‑Jewish measures had been essentially a German affair. According to this view, German authorities designed and executed persecution and deportation, while Luxembourgers either stood aside or, at worst, complied under duress, without ideological commitment or significant initiative of their own.

The Artuso Report was commissioned precisely to test such assumptions against the archival record.

Commissioning the Artuso Report

The immediate catalyst for the Artuso inquiry was a confluence of developments in the early 2010s.

First, archival research began to reveal uncomfortable evidence of Luxembourgish involvement in anti‑Jewish measures. A journalist unearthed historical documents that appeared to implicate members of the political and administrative elite in the implementation of Nazi policies. At the same time, historians questioning the traditional narrative started to gain wider public attention. Some argued that the existing scholarship, which largely absolved Luxembourgish institutions of agency in anti‑Jewish persecution, rested on incomplete archival work and generous interpretations of state behaviour.

Secondly, regional developments played a role. In 2012, Belgium’s prime minister issued a formal apology to the country’s Jewish community for the role of Belgian authorities in the persecution of Jews during the occupation. This step prompted comparisons across borders. If Belgium could acknowledge the darker aspects of its wartime record, activists and historians asked, why could Luxembourg not do the same?

Responding to these pressures, Prime Minister Jean‑Claude Juncker announced in 2012 that an independent commission of historians would be established to examine the role of Luxembourg’s state administration during the Second World War in relation to the persecution of Jews. The stated aim was to move beyond polemics and partial recollection and to produce, on the basis of systematic archival research, a clear picture of what had actually happened.

The lead researcher selected for this task was Vincent Artuso, a historian specialising in Luxembourg’s modern history. Working with a committee of experts and drawing on the holdings of the national archives, ministerial files, police records and other documentation, he embarked on a comprehensive study of state policy from the Nazi seizure of power in Germany in 1933 up to 1941, by which time Luxembourg had been effectively “cleansed” of its Jewish population.

The result, delivered to the government and published in early 2015, bore the title:

“La ‘Question juive’ au Luxembourg (1933–1941): l’État luxembourgeois face aux persécutions antisémites nazies”
(“The ‘Jewish Question’ in Luxembourg (1933–1941): The Luxembourg State in the Face of Nazi Antisemitic Persecutions”)

Because of the central role of its author and the impact of its conclusions, it quickly came to be referred to simply as the Artuso Report.

Method and Sources

The report’s strength lies in its close reading of administrative records rather than its reliance on memoir, public statements or post‑war political narratives.

Artuso and his team examined, among other sources:

• Files of the Foreign Police (Fremdenpolizei), responsible for registering, monitoring and controlling foreign nationals.
• Records of the Ministry of Justice, which handled questions of nationality, residence permits and expulsions.
• Ministerial correspondence, internal memoranda and instructions relating to refugees, “undesirable” persons and Jews in particular.
• Documentation generated by the Administrative Commission after the government went into exile.
• Lists, registers and other bureaucratic instruments used to classify, restrict and ultimately deport Jews.

These sources allowed the commission to reconstruct not only individual cases but also patterns of decision‑making, the criteria applied by officials, and the degree of initiative or resistance displayed by different actors within the state apparatus.

Subsequent projects, notably a research initiative known as LUXSTAPOJE, have built upon this base by systematically analysing Foreign Police files for the period spanning the 1930s to the post‑war years. These investigations confirm and deepen many of the Artuso Report’s core findings about how the Luxembourgish state managed, restricted and sometimes actively rejected Jews seeking refuge or repatriation.

Pre‑war Policy: Restriction, Suspicion and Conditional Hospitality

One of the report’s most important contributions is to show that Luxembourg’s problematic treatment of Jews did not begin with the German invasion in May 1940. It traces a worrying continuity from the early 1930s, when Nazi persecution in Germany drove increasing numbers of Jews to seek refuge in neighbouring countries.

Foreign Police and Ministry of Justice files indicate that:

• Jewish refugees above the age of fifteen were obliged to register upon arrival and to complete detailed declarations of identity, origin and purpose.
• Residence permits and identity documents were granted or renewed only after extensive vetting, including reports on applicants’ occupations, income, perceived moral character and supposed economic usefulness.
• Numerous applications were refused, and expulsion orders issued, where authorities judged an individual to be an economic burden, politically suspect or otherwise undesirable.
• Obstacles were placed in the way of naturalisation, particularly for Jews, reflecting an anxiety about their permanent settlement.

Artuso argues that while Luxembourg did receive a considerable number of Jewish refugees in the 1930s, this occurred against a backdrop of restrictive and often grudging state policy. The primary concern of many officials appears to have been not humanitarian protection but the containment of what they perceived as a potential economic and social problem.

By 1938, as antisemitic persecution in Germany worsened and the prospect of war loomed, petitions and special applications flooded Luxembourgish offices. Jews already in the country sought to reunite with spouses, children or elderly parents stranded in Germany or Austria. The archives contain poignant appeals from individuals desperate to save their families, often backed by endorsements from Jewish welfare organisations.

The response of the authorities was, at best, inconsistent. While some applications were granted, many others were delayed, rejected or made subject to demanding financial conditions. Refugees were sometimes required to deposit funds in Luxembourgish banks or to demonstrate that their presence would not strain public resources. The overall picture is of a bureaucracy that maintained a narrow, utilitarian lens even as the situation of Jews in the Reich became ever more perilous.

This pre‑war restrictive stance set the stage for later collaboration. A state that had already normalised the idea of Jews as administratively problematic “foreigners” was more easily integrated into the machinery of exclusion and deportation once German forces occupied the country.

The Administrative Commission and Early Occupation

When German troops entered Luxembourg in May 1940 and the government fled, the country faced a crisis of authority. Into this void stepped the Administrative Commission, composed of high‑ranking civil servants and notables. Although formally subordinate to German military rule and, later, to a German civil administration, this body exercised considerable influence over domestic affairs.

The Artuso Report pays close attention to the actions and decisions of this commission, especially in the crucial months before full German civil control was imposed.

One of its most disturbing findings concerns an order issued by the Administrative Commission that effectively barred Jews who had fled the country from returning to their homes. Importantly, this measure pre‑dated the complete transfer of authority to German civilian officials. In other words, Luxembourgish administrators themselves took the initiative to prevent Jewish refugees from re‑entering the territory, closing off the possibility of return even as persecution intensified beyond the country’s borders.

This example forms part of a broader pattern identified by Artuso: while the Administrative Commission did at times attempt to shield certain categories of citizens from German demands, it showed far less willingness to defend Jews, particularly foreign Jews, and in some cases actively facilitated their exclusion.

The report concludes that once the occupiers signalled their expectations, Luxembourgish authorities largely cooperated “once they were invited to by the occupier” and “often fulfilled their task with diligence, zeal even.” In certain instances, departmental heads did not wait for precise German instructions but anticipated or elaborated on policies, demonstrating a troubling degree of initiative.

Implementing Nazi Antisemitic Measures

After the initial period of military occupation, the German civil administration began to extend the legal and racial architecture of the Third Reich into Luxembourg. Central to this extension was the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws, which defined Jews in racial terms, stripped them of many civil rights and laid the legal groundwork for segregation and eventual deportation.

From September 1940 onwards, these laws were applied in the Grand Duchy. Jews were subjected to a progressive battery of restrictions:

• Confiscation or “Aryanisation” of Jewish‑owned businesses and property.
• Exclusion from many professions and public services.
• Forced relocation and curfews.
• Eventually, in September 1941, the obligation to wear the yellow Star of David.

The Artuso Report shows that Luxembourgish officials at multiple levels contributed to the practical implementation of these measures. Civil servants:

• Helped to draw up and maintain lists of Jews and persons considered subject to the Nuremberg Laws, including those of mixed ancestry.
• Collaborated with German authorities in the classification of individuals, based on ancestry, religious affiliation and marriage records.
• Cooperated in the seizure and management of Jewish property, including the appointment of administrators and the supervision of sales.

Particularly striking, and symbolically powerful, is the case that first triggered the government’s decision to commission the report: the discovery of a list of 280 Jewish children, apparently compiled by school authorities in order to transmit their names to the German occupiers. The existence of such a document underscores how deeply the process of stigmatisation and segregation had penetrated everyday institutions.

The key point in Artuso’s analysis is not that Germans did not drive policy—they clearly did—but that the success of these policies depended on the active, sometimes proactive, cooperation of Luxembourgish organs of state. Without local knowledge, languages, administrative capacity and legitimacy, the occupiers’ projects would have faced far greater obstacles.

Deportation and the “Cleansing” of Luxembourg

The trajectory of persecution culminated in the deportation of Jews from Luxembourg to ghettos and extermination camps in the east.

The numbers, while small in absolute terms when compared to larger countries, are devastating when set against the size of the community:

• Of the approximately 3,700 Jews present in Luxembourg in 1940, around 2,500 managed to flee the country before emigration was prohibited in October 1941. Many sought refuge in Vichy France or Portugal. However, this escape was often temporary. Large numbers of those who moved to France were later trapped by German occupation and deported from French territory.
• Roughly 800 Jews remained in Luxembourg by October 1941. It was this group that became the direct target of deportations organised from within the country.
• Between October 1941 and June 1943, seven transports departed from Luxembourg, chiefly via the Luxembourg‑Hollerich station, sending Jews to ghettos and camps such as Lodz (Litzmannstadt), Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.
• By October 1941, the country was officially declared “judenrein” – “cleansed of Jews”.

Artuso’s research, reinforced by subsequent memorial and historical work, estimates that around 1,300 Jews who had been resident in Luxembourg in 1940 were eventually deported to death camps, either directly from the Grand Duchy or after fleeing to neighbouring countries.

After the war, only a tiny fraction of Luxembourg’s pre‑war Jewish population survived. Contemporary estimates suggest that as few as 36 Jews who had lived in Luxembourg before 1940 survived the Holocaust in, or in connection with, the Grand Duchy itself. Others survived by virtue of emigration to safer countries beyond Nazi reach.

Here again, the Artuso Report locates responsibility not only in German officials but also in the local administrative infrastructure that made these deportations possible. The compilation of deportation lists, the coordination of transport from specific stations, and the preparation of files all drew upon the work of Luxembourgish civil servants.

Post‑war Repatriation and the Persistence of Bureaucratic Attitudes

One might imagine that the revelation of the horrors inflicted upon Europe’s Jews would have prompted a radical change in official attitudes. Yet research building on Artuso’s findings indicates a disturbing continuity in the way Luxembourgish authorities treated Jews in the immediate post‑war years.

More than 300 surviving Jews, many of whom had lived in Luxembourg before the war, submitted applications to return and to re‑establish their lives in the country. These applications were handled by the same or similar bureaucratic structures—Foreign Police, Ministry of Justice, municipal authorities—that had processed refugee cases in the 1930s.

Archival evidence reveals that:

• Applicants were required to complete lengthy questionnaires detailing their pre‑war residence, family ties, health, financial situation and movements during the war.
• Reports were compiled on each applicant’s perceived character, solvency and “suitability” for readmission.
• The Ministry of Justice retained significant discretion to accept or reject applications, often on grounds that now appear arbitrary or excessively strict.
• Some survivors were required to make financial deposits or to prove they would not impose burdens on the state, despite the fact that they were returning to homes and businesses they had been forced to abandon.
• A number of applications were rejected outright, sometimes with minimal explanation.

In many cases, the criteria and language used in these assessments bore a striking resemblance to pre‑war practices. While there were certainly differences—overtly racial arguments disappeared, and horrific knowledge of the camps could not be entirely ignored—the fundamental logic of control, suspicion and economic calculation persisted.

These findings underscore one of the Artuso Report’s deeper implications: the problem is not confined to moments of acute crisis or external pressure. Rather, endemic features of a state’s administrative culture—its ways of categorising, controlling and evaluating people—can either reinforce or restrain genocidal projects. When such a culture already treats certain groups as a problem to be managed, it becomes easier for occupiers to harness it to destructive ends.

The Political and Moral Aftermath

The publication of the Artuso Report in early 2015 did not remain a purely academic event. Its conclusions fed directly into a historic parliamentary debate and apology later that year.

On 9 June 2015, Luxembourg’s Chamber of Deputies adopted, unanimously, a resolution acknowledging the suffering inflicted on Jews during the war and apologising for the collaboration of Luxembourgish government officials and institutions in that persecution. The text recognised that the state’s administrative apparatus had played a role in identifying, marginalising, dispossessing and deporting Jews.

Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, addressing the chamber, explicitly referred to the findings of the report. He noted that around 1,300 Jews who had lived in Luxembourg in 1940 had been deported to their deaths, whether from the Grand Duchy itself or via neighbouring countries. He stated that this was a reality for which the government must assume responsibility and for which he apologised directly to the Jewish community and to the families of the victims.

The Speaker of Parliament, Mars Di Bartolomeo, praised the seriousness of the debate and emphasised that it had been prompted by the detailed evidence produced by the historians’ commission. The Artuso Report, in other words, had succeeded in its aim: to force a confrontation with uncomfortable truths and to anchor political statements in documented fact.

Memory, Commemoration and the Artuso Legacy

The impact of the report extends beyond parliamentary resolutions. It has shaped how Luxembourg commemorates the Holocaust and how it integrates this past into education and public space.

In June 2018, the Memorial to the Victims of the Shoah was inaugurated on Boulevard Roosevelt in Luxembourg City, near the site of the city’s first synagogue, destroyed by the Nazis during the war. Created by the Franco‑Israeli artist Shelomo Selinger, himself a Holocaust survivor, the monument honours both native Jews and those who sought refuge in Luxembourg and were persecuted or deported.

At the main railway station, a plaque in Luxembourgish and French now reminds travellers that between October 1941 and June 1943, 658 Jewish men, women and children were deported from that station to Nazi ghettos and camps, where they were murdered. Similar memorials exist at other sites connected to deportation and internment, such as the former transit camp at Cinqfontaines in northern Luxembourg.

Alongside these physical memorials, the government has created institutions dedicated to the preservation and transmission of this history. A state‑supported foundation, often referred to as the Shoah Foundation in Luxembourg, was endowed with initial capital and tasked with supporting research, education and commemoration. A Committee for the Remembrance of the Second World War now brings together representatives of resistance groups, former conscripts and Jewish victims to advise on memory policy.

The Artuso Report has also influenced school curricula and public history. Holocaust education is mandatory at secondary level, and teaching materials increasingly address not only Nazi ideology and German occupation but also Luxembourg’s own role—its rescue efforts, its victims and its complicity. Exhibitions and public discussions organised by museums, archives and civil society organisations draw heavily on the report’s findings.

Moreover, the report has spurred further scholarly work. Projects like LUXSTAPOJE continue to mine the rich but sensitive vein of Foreign Police and Ministry of Justice records, producing micro‑historical studies of individual Jewish families, patterns of migration and the social networks that shaped survival or destruction. These studies, in turn, refine and sometimes complicate the broader conclusions of the Artuso Report, illustrating the dynamic nature of historical reckoning.

Significance Beyond Luxembourg

While the Artuso Report is specific to one small European country, its significance extends beyond Luxembourg’s borders.

Firstly, it offers a case study in the importance of administrative history. Much of the Holocaust was enabled not just by ideological fanatics but by ordinary bureaucrats: clerks, policemen, civil servants and lawyers. Artuso’s work shows how a national administration, operating under occupation but retaining some autonomy, can become enmeshed in genocidal policy through a combination of compliance, opportunism, inertia and, at times, initiative.

Secondly, it contributes to a broader European trend in which states revisit long‑settled narratives about the Second World War. In the decades immediately following 1945, many countries foregrounded resistance and suffering while minimising or ignoring collaboration, especially collaboration in crimes against Jews. Beginning in the late twentieth century and accelerating after the end of the Cold War, several Western European states—including France, Belgium and the Netherlands—commissioned historical commissions and eventually issued official apologies for aspects of their wartime conduct.

Luxembourg’s Artuso Report belongs to this wave of late reckonings, but it is distinctive in its thorough focus on the mechanics of state policy and its explicit linkage to a parliamentary and governmental acknowledgement of responsibility.

Thirdly, the report raises enduring questions about how small states behave under extreme pressure. Luxembourg’s leaders in exile could credibly claim that their country was too small to resist German invasion; militarily, this was undoubtedly true. But the Artuso Report makes clear that military powerlessness does not automatically entail moral powerlessness. Even within narrow margins, choices were made: who to protect, who to classify, who to expel, who to assist in leaving, who to prevent from returning. The existence of constraint does not erase agency, even if it complicates judgements of culpability.

Finally, the report underscores the value—and the limits—of historical commissions. By themselves, such reports do not right past wrongs or compensate victims. However, when taken seriously, they can inform public debate, underpin symbolic gestures like apologies and memorials, and provide a factual basis on which future generations can build a more honest understanding of their nation’s past.

Conclusion: From Silence to Confrontation

For much of the post‑war period, Luxembourg lived with a partial story about its role in the Second World War. That story was not simply a lie; it reflected real resistance, real suffering and real injustice inflicted on the country by Nazi Germany. But it was incomplete. It left out the experiences of Jewish refugees turned away, of neighbours labelled and listed, of families deported with the help of local infrastructure. It underplayed the moral ambiguity and, at times, complicity of institutions that, in other contexts, Luxembourgers might reasonably be proud of.

The Artuso Report did not discover that Luxembourg had run the Holocaust. It did something more subtle and, in many ways, more unsettling: it documented how a small state’s bureaucracy, shaped by pre‑existing attitudes towards foreigners and Jews, responded to occupation and how those responses contributed to catastrophe. It showed that collaboration need not take the form of ideological enthusiasm or open violence; it can manifest as diligent paperwork, unthinking obedience and the quiet anticipation of what powerful occupiers might want.

By forcing these realities into the open, the report enabled Luxembourg to move from silence and partial memory to a more comprehensive, if painful, confrontation with its past. The parliamentary apology, the new memorials and the shifts in education and scholarship are all part of this process. They do not erase what happened, nor do they resolve all questions, but they testify to a willingness to acknowledge that the line between victim and collaborator is sometimes less clear than post‑war myths suggest.

In this sense, the Artuso Report is more than a study of Luxembourgish history. It is a reminder that the integrity of democratic states depends not only on how they act in easy times but also—and perhaps more importantly—on how they account for their actions when the darkest chapters of their histories are finally, and irrevocably, laid bare.