Yvonne Useldinger (née Hostert; 6 November 1921 – 11 February 2009) was a

Luxembourgian Luxembourgish ( ; also ''Luxemburgish'', ''Luxembourgian'', ''Letzebu(e)rgesch''; Luxembourgish: ) is a West Germanic language that is spoken mainly in Luxembourg. About 400,000 people speak Luxembourgish worldwide. As a standard form of th ...

politician.

Life

Yvonne Hostert was born in Differdange, and became in 1937 a member of the Young Socialists. In 1938 she joined the

Communist Party of Luxembourg The Communist Party of Luxembourg ( lb, Kommunistesch Partei vu Lëtzebuerg; french: Parti Communiste Luxembourgeois; german: Kommunistische Partei Luxemburgs; abbr. KPL or PCL) is a communist party in Luxembourg. is the current chairman of th ...

. In 1940 she married

Arthur Useldinger Arthur Useldinger (8 July 1904 – 15 March 1978) was a Luxembourgian politician. He was a member of the Communist Party of Luxembourg. Useldinger served two stints as Mayor of Esch-sur-Alzette: one following the end of the Second World War, and ...

, a senior figure in the Communist Party. In 1941 she was arrested by the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

, but was released due to a lack of evidence against her. A year later, by which time she had become pregnant, she was arrested again, with her parents and brother. Her daughter, Fernande, was born in a jail in Trier. In late June 1943 she was deported to

Ravensbrück concentration camp Ravensbrück () was a German concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in northern Germany, north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel). The camp memorial's estimated figure o ...

, where she later became a member of an illegal underground organisation. Her father was deported first to

Hinzert concentration camp Hinzert was a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, in what is now Rhineland-Palatinate, from the border with Luxembourg. Between 1939 and 1945, 13,600 political prisoners between the ages of 13 and 80 were imprisoned at Hinzert. Many were in tr ...

, later to

Mauthausen Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern German ...

; her brother was sent to

Dachau , , commandant = List of commandants , known for = , location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany , built by = Germany , operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) , original use = Political prison , construction ...

. Her mother was released, and took care of Yvonne's baby. Yvonne Useldinger was transferred in December 1944 from Ravensbrück camp to a secondary camp, which had been built nearby by

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', '' ...

. After Ravensbrück was liberated by the

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, after ...

, Useldinger was in late April 1945 evacuated to Sweden by the Swedish Red Cross. Shortly after, she returned to Luxembourg. In 1945 she co-founded the ''Union des Femmes Luxembourgeoises'' (UFL), of which she later became the president. Her diary is one of the few documents that survive from Ravensbrück camp.

External links

Page from her diary, drawing and photos of Yvonne Useldinger

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Useldinger, Yvonne 1921 births 2009 deaths Communist Party of Luxembourg politicians People from Steinfort 20th-century Luxembourgian politicians 20th-century Luxembourgian women politicians People from Differdange

Life

Further reading

External links

References