Memorials to visit Luxembourg

On August 31, 1942, in response to the military obligation decreed by the German occupier, the inhabitants of Wiltz decided to start a general strike. 21 patriots (20 Luxembourgers and 1 German) who refused to submit were then shot in Hinzert. To pay tribute to the heroism of the population and its resistance, this monument was erected in 1956 by the Luxembourg architect Roger Wercollier and his brother, the famous sculptor Lucien Wercollier.

In the past, a Roman bridge connected Stadtbredimus to Palzem, the German village on the other side of the Moselle. It no longer exists and some of the columns found in 1962 are in the Landesmuseum in Trier (Germany). It is thought that the Romans took advantage of the remains of a Celtic footbridge to build this bridge of at least 5 columns around 56 AD. The upper wooden construction could have carried a 6 to 6.50 m wide roadway.

This memorial was erected on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Luxembourg by the Allied armies. It contains the plaques of the American units that took part in the battle. Nearby, a 3 km-long memorial trail leads through the woods that were the object of intense fighting. The holes of the riflemen correspond to the locations of the bodies of the 160 German and American soldiers who were discovered there after the fighting that followed on December 30, 1944.