Memorial Day is observed annually on the last Monday of May and commemorates the personnel who lost their lives serving in the United States Armed Forces.
Memorial Day has also been observed in the Grand Duchy since the 1950s.
Many families were present to mourn the 5,075 American soldiers who are buried in Luxembourg. It was the first time that the new American Ambassador to Luxembourg Thomas Barret participated in the ceremony.
He used the opportunity to also address the lives that are currently being lost in the war in Ukraine: “It is a frightening reminder that we still need to fight for our values. Four months ago, I would not have thought that what occurred in 1944 could happen once again in present-day Europe. But it did.”
The stories of contemporary witnesses from World War II provide an important perspective on the events of this global conflict. For many children in Ukraine, those horrors have become reality, stressed Ambassador Barret: “One has to remember that in 80 years, the children of Bucha, Luhansk, and Mariupol will tell the story of the brutal Russian invasion. They will remember how the bombs rained down on them.”
An estimated 71,000 soldiers who died in WWII remain unidentified to this day. The US Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency continues treating these cases and was recently able to return the remains of soldier James Wright to his family after 77 years of uncertainty.
At the end of yesterday’s ceremony, visitors were able to leave commemorative wreaths.
