Watch the testimony of Claude Loewenstein who remembers the fate of their family business at the time of the German occupation.
Claude Loewenstein was born in Luxembourg in 1928. His father had a shoemaker business in Luxembourg city. When nazi forces invaded Luxembourg, Loewenstein’s family did not manage to escape on time and was transported by bus to Macon in 1940. After many hardships they ended up in Gurs, an internment camp in southern France in December 1940. Thanks to his father’s sister, the family could leave the camp and moved to a rented apartment in Saint Antonin where they spent 22 months. Later on the family was forced to go back to Gurs without any explanations. In 1942, they were allowed to move to the an empty farm house in Saint-Romain-d'Urfé. The farm house was raided by the underground forces and young Claude joined them. After the Battle of Bulge, he returned to Luxembourg in February 1945 to stay at father’s sister in Luxembourg who had not been deported as she married to non-Jew.