Differdange awarded Oppenheimer Foundation Prize

By Caroline Diana

A foundation that aims to contest neo-Nazism, intolerance, and racism has awarded the annual Prix René Oppenheimer to the city of Differdange.

At the acceptance ceremony on Thursday, the Mayor of Differdange, Roberto Traversini accepted the award from the Luxembourg-based Rene Oppenheimer Foundation.

“It was a bit of Differdange history that has been forgotten, after the war everybody wanted to rebuild the country and that led to forgetting about all that had happened that was not exactly good,” Traversini said.

“It was not a will to forget but the fact that people were focusing on rebuilding the country.”

Alfred Oppenheimer, a native Luxembourger during the time of the Holocaust, was deported to Auschwitz along with his wife and son, René.

There, his wife and son were killed. Alfred survived the camp and returned to Luxembourg where he lived until his death. Out of 683 Jews deported from Luxembourg, Alfred was one of the 43 survivors.

The Oppenheimer Foundation created the Prix René Oppenheimer in honor of Alfred’s son René. Founded in 1991, the René Oppenheimer Foundation awards places or individuals living in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg for their work in recognizing and remembering victims and survivors of the Holocaust.

This year the award went to the city of Differdange for its exhibition about the fate of the city’s Jews, the creation of a booklet which showcased the names and what happened to the Jews who were deported during the Holocaust, as well as a public apology from Traversini to the Jewish community for the treatment of Jews in Differdange during the Holocaust.

Caroline Diana is a Boston, Massachusetts native who is currently a junior studying journalism and professional writing at Miami University.

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