9 September marks the day American troops first crossed the Luxembourgish border into Pétange to liberate Luxembourg from Nazi occupation.
This weekend, a number of Luxembourg communes commemorated the historic moment when Luxembourg regained its freedom after four years of living under Nazi rule.
The parade through the streets of Mersch on Sunday afternoon gave younger generations, who fortunately only know about the war through history books and films, a chance to feel the atmosphere that enveloped the country at the time of the liberation on September 10, 1944.
However, the older generation, who witnessed the liberation in 1944 first hand, saw the festivities organised under the slogan "Free at last" through a different perspective.
Léon Kayser remembers seeing the first American jeep in Schoenfels. Triny Walin, her voice filled with emotion even 80 years on, recounts how she and her mother saw the first Americans arrive in Hamiville in Éislek, the north of the country.
Later immigrating to Luxembourg, Louis Malherbe, now 98, lived through the war in the Belgian Ardennes. The parade on Sunday left an indelible mark on the Belgian native: "We don't forget and we must never forget. And the older I get, the more it affects me. We saw too many deaths - that scars you forever," he shares.
In Mersch, people commemorated those who lost their lives in the war so people today can live a life in peace and freedom. But equally, people also contemplated the state of the world today.
"O Thou above whose powerful hand. Makes States or lays them low, protect this Luxembourger land, from foreign yoke and woe. Your spirit of liberty bestow. On us now as of yore."
A rendition of Ons Heemecht ("Our Homeland" in Luxembourgish) concluded the mass led by Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich on Sunday morning in Pétange. In his sermon, the Differdange native, who heard stories of the war as a child, wondered: Have we learned nothing from history?
The mass commemorated the smugglers and resistance fighters who were working across Luxembourg's three borders, connected to networks in France and Belgium, and even as far away as England.
This Monday evening, the Hereditary Grand Duke Guillaume and Luxembourgish Prime Minister Luc Frieden will take part in an official commemoration ceremony in Pétange to remember Hyman Josefson, the first American soldier to die on Luxembourgish soil. A memorial in Josefson honour was built on Rue de Linger.
Watch the report in French:
