Dr Paul Sanders believes that Occupation studies are entering an era of open-mindedness and balance in which Jersey’s role will be seen to compare fav-ourably with that of other territories taken over by the Nazis.
This ‘new maturity of outlook’ was praised yesterday by the Bailiff, Sir Philip Bailhache, at the launch of a revised edition of Dr Sanders’s earlier work on the Occupation, The Ultimate Sacrifice.Sir Philip said that the book’s orginal publication in 1998 had helped bring about a ‘minor revolution’ in perceptions of the Occupation.
Before it, with honourable exceptions such as Charles Cruickshank’s standard history in the 1970s, there had only been what Dr Sanders accurately described as ‘a rather stale diet of popular authors repackaging .
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elements found in other publications’.The new edition of The Ultimate Sacrifice, which centres on the treatment of 22 Islanders deported or otherwise persecuted by the Germans and includes a new chapter contributed by JEP journalist Paula Thelwell, has been expanded to take account of new information becoming available with the opening up of former Communist countries.
