The Inconvenient Past – Vanished Traces of Forced Laborers from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus in Luxembourg

GUEST SPEAKER
Dr. Inna Ganschow

Inna GANSCHOW - C²DH - University of Luxembourg I Uni.lu

Title: The Inconvenient Past – Vanished Traces of Forced Laborers from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus in Luxembourg

Bio: Inna Ganschow is a scholar with strong expertise in the history of migration, media, and literature of the 20th and 21st centuries, with a geographical focus on Russia, Ukraine, and Luxembourg and interests in digital methods. Ganschow has published several books, including her PhD thesis in 2013 on postmodern Russian literature, a monograph on multicultural migration from Russia titled 100 Years of Russians in Luxembourg: History of an Atomized Diaspora (in German) in 2020 and the book ‘Nobody cried, there were no tears left’ (in German) on Soviet forced laborers in 2025. She is currently working as research scientist at the Luxembourg Center for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) on the oral history project U-CORE, which is dedicated to collecting, preserving, analysing and disclosing war testimonies from Ukraine. She is a co-founder of the Luxembourg Ukrainian Researcher Network (LURN), which was created in 2022. In parallel to her academic career, Ganschow has also maintained a career in journalism, working as a freelancer for ZDF Television in Germany, newspapers Trierischer Volksfreund, Luxemburger Wort and Tageblatt interviewing historical witnesses, including former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev (2005) and Naina Yeltsina, the widow of Russian President Boris Yeltsin (2016).

In her talk, Ganschow will speak about the recent publication on 4,000 Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian forced laborers in Luxembourg during WWII, and about how their memory has almost completely vanished after the war. One of the largest forced labor camp sites was located next to the steel plant ARBED in Esch/Alzette, their biggest employer at the time. Today, a modern university campus stands on this site — yet neither students nor staff are aware of its past, where, 80 years ago, young people also arrived every morning.

Only they did not come to study but were forced to perform hard physical labor.

Most of the former forced laborers were teenage girls from Ukraine. They were repatriated in 1945–1946, while collective memory in Luxembourg focused on other victims of the Nazi regime. To this day, there is no memorial plaque, monument, or statue to commemorate their imprisonment in barracks or their forced labor in the steel industry, agriculture, or private households.

WHEN

Tuesday, September 09, 2025 at 07:00 PM Paris Time

WHERE

QoSQo Restaurant
15 Place d'Armes
Luxembourg-Haute 1136
Luxembourg
Google map and directions

CONTACT

Democrats Abroad Luxembourg

10 RSVPs