(JTA) —Luxembourg apologized for its authorities’ role in the persecution of Jews during the World War II occupation by the Nazis.
In a declaration signed this week by Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, Luxembourg’s Parliament offered an “apology to the Jewish community for the suffering inflicted on it and for the injustices committed.”
The resolution, which was signed by 60 Luxembourg lawmakers, also “recognizes the responsibility of some public officials in the unforgivable events committed.”
Out of the approximately 3,700 Jews who lived in Luxembourg before the war, over 1,200 were deported and killed in Nazi death camps between 1940 and 1944. In October 1941, Luxembourg was declared “Judenrein,” or “cleansed of Jews.”
The public apology follows a government-commissioned report saying that “the Luxembourg administration collaborated politically with the German administration in anti-Semitic persecution in three ways: identifying people believed to belong to the Jewish race according to criteria set by the Germans; their expulsion from public roles, professions and schools; and the theft of their property.”
Belgium issued a similar apology in 2012.
