National Resistance Museum, the Nazi occupation told in Esch

Of all the museums in the south, this is the one that asks me to slow down. Luxembourg’s national museum of resistance and human rights tells how the country lived through the Nazi occupation, who resisted, who collaborated and what happened to those who ended up in the camps. And it tells that story in Esch-sur-Alzette, a working-class town that paid dearly for those years.

A museum built by the survivors

The museum opened in 1956. The town of Esch-sur-Alzette built it at the initiative of the local branch of the Luxembourg league of political prisoners and deportees, next to the war memorial, in honour of the victims of Nazism and of the workers who died in the mines and works of the south. That’s how the museum tells its own history.

For decades it was run by the league and then by the town. In 2017 the town and the government decided to renovate and enlarge it and set up a foundation to manage it. Work began at the end of 2018, with the Jim Clemes practice as architects, and the museum reopened in 2022 as part of Esch’s European Capital of Culture year. The current permanent exhibition opened on 1 March 2024, in a space the museum says is three times larger than before.

What the permanent exhibition covers

It’s in three languages, French, German and English, so a British visitor can follow every panel. The entrance hall opens with the resistance and a series of biographical niches. The ground floor of the new wing deals with the interwar years, the Nazi structures and daily life under a totalitarian state.

The first floor is the hardest part. It covers collaboration and resistance, the forced conscription of young Luxembourgers into the German army, repression, the resettlement and concentration camps, the art made inside them, the Holocaust, liberation, the post-war years and memory. It closes with a section on human rights.

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The objects that stay with you

The museum highlights a few pieces on its website, and they give a good sense of the tone. A card made in Ravensbrück by the communist resistance fighter Yvonne Useldinger, recording moments of solidarity among the prisoners. A forged identity card from 1943, of the kind groups such as the PI-Men supplied to people fleeing to France or Belgium. A poster from August 1940 by Gauleiter Gustav Simon telling Luxembourgers their language was German. And a 1942 call for a general strike against forced conscription.

There’s also a space for remembrance with urns holding soil gathered after the war from different camps, and Lucien Wercollier’s sculpture The Political Prisoner. For the wider picture of those years across the country, see my overview of Luxembourg in the Second World War.

The 2026 temporary exhibition

Until 20 December 2026 you can see Women in War by the American photojournalist Lynsey Addario, twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize. She created it for the museum, and it closes the Women in Conflict cycle on women in wars past and present. Standard entry includes the temporary exhibitions, so there’s nothing extra to pay.

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Opening times, prices and getting there

Opening hours are 10am to 6pm, Tuesday to Sunday, with Mondays closed. Entry costs €5, or €4 each for groups of at least 8 adults. Under-21s, students, Kulturpass and ICOM card holders and anyone with a LuxembourgPass go free.

It’s on place de la Résistance, in the pedestrian heart of Esch-sur-Alzette, an 8-minute walk from Esch station. Buses 3 and 4 stop at Boulevard Prince Henri, and there’s an underground car park alongside. Wheelchair access is guaranteed and reception can lend you a chair.

How I’d fit it in

The museum closes on Mondays and the Belval blast furnaces on Tuesdays, so from Wednesday to Sunday you can do both. Coming from Luxembourg City, the train to Esch station is free in second class, and the museum makes a sensible first stop straight off the platform. I’d start here in the morning, have lunch in the centre and climb the furnace in the afternoon. On the way out, look down at the memorial stones set into the pavements outside victims’ homes, since the museum suggests a walking route past them.

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