A HOLOCAUST historian has called for an inquiry into the number of people who died in concentration and labour camps in Alderney during the Second World War to be extended to ‘the whole of the Channel Islands’.
Marcus Roberts, one of the founders of JTrails – a group working to promote and protect Anglo-Jewish history – has welcomed the recent announcement of an official review of the scale of German atrocities committed in Alderney.
The Germans established four camps in the island after invading and occupying it in 1940.
A panel of experts will attempt to determine whether it is possible to say how many died in them.
The scope of the review will be revealed later this year by Lord Pickles, the UK’s special envoy for post-Holocaust issues, but Mr Roberts said it should cover ‘the whole of the Channel Islands’.
‘I believe it is important that all aspects of the Holocaust and slave labour are addressed across the whole of the Channel Islands, and not just in Alderney, as the evidence shows that Jews were prisoners and victims in Jersey and Guernsey as well and that there were many other slave labourers in numerous camps across the islands, often carrying out works at a far greater number and scale than even those in Alderney,’ he said.
‘The scale of deaths was far greater than indicated by the grave makers in the slave-workers’ cemeteries and the prisoners suffered a similar regime of starvation, neglect, beatings and shootings.’
Another historian who has studied the Occupation, Dr Gilly Carr, said the announcement of the review was ‘excellent news’.
‘In recent years there have been a number of competing theories published in national newspapers, which I imagine is extremely disruptive and upsetting to the people who live in Alderney today,’ she said.
‘A subject like this needs considered and specialised research in international archives that is backed up by clear evidence and has gone through a process of peer review. An expert review like the one forthcoming is important for those who died and their families.’
Commenting on whether the review should encompass the whole of the Channel Islands, she added: ‘The situation between Guernsey and Jersey on the one hand and Alderney on the other is different.
‘The Germans had a free hand to act as they wanted in Alderney but in Guernsey and Jersey the local people were watching, helping escaped slave workers when and if they could, and keeping notes in diaries about what they saw.’
She noted that an unknown number of the prisoners and labourers who were in Alderney ‘were also in Jersey and/or Guernsey’.
‘Francisco Font, the father of my friend Gary Font, is just one example of this. There is also much more certainty about the numbers who died in Guernsey and Jersey.
‘An expert review of numbers who died in Alderney also takes into account the other islands, and records held by archives in Jersey and Guernsey will be relevant for this work,’ she explained.
