User:Dr Gangrene/sandbox5

In the early 20th century the Bourbon plateau was underogoing a period of intensive urbanisation. Numerous expensive houses were being constructed. The Boulevard de la Pétrusse was a particularly desirable location, and several mansions were bullt there before and after the First World War. The most impressive of these was built for Dr Norbert Pauly, a surgeon, at number 57.

This town house with hte appearance of a chateau was the work of the architect Mathia Martin. In 1923, Dr Pauly set up his medical practice there in the basement.

The four square towers, the bridge leading to the porch, and the masonry of the façade underline the medieval character of the imposing building.

On 10 May 1940, when Luxembourg was occupied by the German army, Dr Pauly was on holiday in the south of France. Unable to return to Luxembourg until late summer, he found his home occupied by the "Einsatzkommando der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD", better known as the Gestapo. Dr Pauly had to resign himself to accept the new tenants, who would lend the "Villa Pauly" a sinister reputation.

From the first arrests performed by Gestapo agents during the protests against the demolition of the "Gëlle Fra" in October 1940, the name "Villa Pauly" took on a connotation of terror which was to stick with the Luxembourgish population. This was strengthened by the long black flags of the SS outside the mansion. Many people avoided walking past the Villa Pauly during the occupation completely.

Those who had the misfortune to be arrested for anti-German activities or for acts of resistance, found themselves in the entrance hall where they would have to stand facing the wall before being brought into one of the offices where they underwent interrogation, which would often involve physical violence.

Cells were installed in the cellar, where numerous detainees were locked up in between their interrogations. The cellar of the central heating served as a torture room. Witnesses recall that the prisoners were suspended from heating pipes, upside down, others were beaten with a stick. After an initial brutal interrogation, certain prisoners had difficulties going down the stairs, which caused their tormentors to push them down, causing additional injuries.

For a large number of Resistance members, the Villa Pauly then became a place of torture and suffering, the entrance gate to the system of concentration camps where they were often destined to end up.

It was also the administrative centre from where the deportation of the Jews living in Luxembourg was organised. The members of the Consistoire had to present themselves to an office in the Villa Pauly to receive their orders from the orders so as to organise the deportation of their coreligionists.

During the liberation on 10 September 1944, some excited people set fire to the papers left behind by the Gestapo, but the fire brigade were able to save the building. From September 1944, the Counter Intelligence Corps of the US Army set up their offices there. After Germany's surrender, the Luxembourgish state rented the building and accommodated parts of several ministries there, those for heath, labour, and social security. The cellar was renovated, the cells demolished.

From the end of the war, the Villa Pauly was presented as the first stage in the ordeal of resistants who had fallen into the Gestapo's hands. In 1947, the newspaper Rappel, published by the LPPD, protested against the fact that the Villa Pauly had been refurbished to house Luxembourgish government offices. The former Resistance demanded the creation in the Villa Pauly of a museum devoted to the barbarism of the Nazi regime. Yet little was done in this direction, as the more immediate post-war concerns, such as repatriation, reparations, and reconstruction, occupied decision-makers' minds. The trial of Gestapo members, which took place in February 1951, delivered numerous witness accounts on the acts of torture, accounts which were published in the press. Hence, for many years, Luxembourers' collective memory saw the Villa Pauly as a centre of the Nazi repression in Luxembourg. The building symbolised the terror and suffering which had been visited on the members of the Resistance.

After having rented the building after the war, the government acquired it in March 1960.

In 1984, the 40th anniversary of the Liberation, former resistants believed that the historical significance of certain buildings, such as the Villa Pauly, should be better explained through commemorative plaques. Thus, at the initiative of the Minister of Health, Emile Krieps, himself a former Resistance member, and the Conseil national de la Résistance, on 9 April 1984, the prime minister Pierre Werner, and the deputy prime minister Colette Flesch unveiled a commemorative plaque at the entrance of the Villa Pauly, with the following inscription:

« Villa Pauly / Siège de la Gestapo / 1940-1944 / Passant, souviens-toi / des résistants torturés / en ces lieux / sous l’occupation nazie ».

"Villa Pauly / Seat of the Gestapo / 1940-1944 / Passerby, remember / the tortured resistants / in these premises / under Nazi occupation"