Alderney camps

The Alderney camps were camps built and operated by Nazi Germany on the island of Alderney during its World War II occupation of the Channel Islands.^[1] Alderney had four forced/slave labour sites, including Lager Sylt, the only Nazi concentration camp on British soil during the wartime occupation.^[2]

Camps

In 1941 Nazi military engineers built four labour camps on Alderney.^[3] The Nazi Organisation Todt (OT) operated each subcamp and used forced labour to build fortifications in Alderney, including bunkers, gun emplacements, air raid shelters, tunnels and concrete fortifications. The camps commenced operation in January 1942. They were named after various islands in the North Sea: Borkum, Helgoland, Norderney and Sylt.

The four camps on the island had a total inmate population that fluctuated but is estimated at about 6,000.^[4] The exact details are impossible to determine as many records were destroyed.

In 2022, studies indicated that as many as nine camps were built on Alderney.^[3]

Two work camps

The two work camps were:

The Borkum and Helgoland camps were "volunteer" (Hilfswillige) labour camps^[5] and the labourers in those camps were treated harshly but better than the inmates at the Sylt and Norderney camps.^{[citation needed]}

Borkum camp was used for German technicians and "volunteers" from different countries of Europe. Helgoland camp was used for Russian Organisation Todt workers.^{[citation needed]}

Two concentration camps

The other two camps became concentration camps when they were handed over to be run by the SS from 1 March 1943; they became subcamps of the Neuengamme camp outside Hamburg:^{[citation needed]}

The prisoners in Lager Sylt and Lager Norderney were slave labourers forced to build the many military fortifications and installations throughout Alderney. Sylt camp held Jewish enforced labourers.^[6]

Norderney camp housed European (mainly Eastern but including Spanish) and Russian enforced labourers. The Lager Sylt commandant, Karl Tietz, had a black French colonial as an under officer. Tietz was brought before a court-martial in April 1943 and sentenced to 18 months' penal servitude for the crime of selling on the black market after he sold cigarettes, watches, and valuables he had bought from Dutch OT workers.^[7]^: 147

In March 1943, Lager Norderney, containing Russian and Polish POWs, and Lager Sylt, holding Jews, were placed under the control of the SS, with SS Hauptsturmführer Maximilian List commanding.^{[citation needed]}

Deaths

More than 700 camp inmates lost their lives before the camps were closed and the remaining inmates transferred to France in 1944.^[6]

There are 397 known graves in Alderney. Apart from malnutrition, accidents and ill treatment, there were losses on ships bringing OT workers to or taking them from Alderney. In January 1943 there was a big storm and two ships, the Xaver Dorsch and the Franks, anchored in Alderney harbour were blown ashore onto the beach, they contained about 1,000 Russian OT workers. Being kept locked in the holds for two weeks whilst the ships were salvaged resulted in a number of deaths.^[8]^: 77^[9]

On 4 July 1944 the Minotaure an ocean-going tug sailing from Alderney to St Malo with about 500 OT workers was hit three times by torpedoes but somehow managed to stay afloat; some 250 died with the ship being towed into St Malo. Two of the escort vessels, V 208 R. Walther Darré and V 210 Hinrich Hey, were sunk. V 209 Dr. Rudolf Wahrendorff and the minesweeper M 4622 were damaged.^[8]^: 81^[10]

Documents from the ITS Archives in Germany show prisoners of numerous nationalities were incarcerated in Alderney, with many dying on the island. The causes of death included suicide, pneumonia, being shot, heart failure and explosions. Detailed death certificates were filled out and the deaths were reported to OT in St Malo.^[11]^: 212–4

Post-war

After World War II, a court-martial case was prepared against former SS Hauptsturmführer Maximilian List, citing atrocities on Alderney.^[12] However, since the majority of those killed on Alderney were Soviets, the British government deferred to the Soviet Union in the matter of trials over the camps; in exchange, the Soviets handed over to the British the suspects in the Stalag Luft III murders. No war crimes trials were conducted over the Alderney killings,^[13] and List is believed to have lived near Hamburg until his death in the 1980s.^[14]

In 1949, an East German court convicted an SS man named Peter Bikar of crimes against humanity for the non-fatal abuse of prisoners in the Alderney camps. He was sentenced to five years in prison for beating multiple prisoners with the butt of his rifle.^[15]^[16]^[17]

The four German camps in Alderney have not been preserved or commemorated, aside from a small plaque at the former SS camp Lager Sylt. One camp is now a tourist camping site, while the gates to another form the entrance to the island's rubbish tip. The other two have been left to fall into ruin and become overgrown by brambles.^{[citation needed]}

In 2017, military authors Colonel Richard Camp and John Weigold wrote in the Daily Mail that they believed between 40,000 and 70,000 slave workers had died at Alderney,^[18]^[3] and that Alderney had been turned into "a secret base to launch V1 missiles with chemical warheads on the South Coast."^[18]^[19]^[3] Their estimates of the deaths at Alderney were much greater than the largest estimates made by other historians, and caused consternation in Alderney.^[3] Trevor Davenport, the director of the Alderney museum, dismissed their estimates as "rubbish"^[3] and their claim of Alderney being turned into a secret base as "utter nonsense".^[19] Archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls of Staffordshire University said that there was "no evidence... to suggest that numbers in the tens of thousands of deaths are in any way credible whatsoever. There is no evidence to suggest that that many people were even sent to Alderney."^[20]

Gillian Carr, a Senior Lecturer at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, researched the German occupation of the Channel Islands and persecution of over 2,000 islanders from 1940 to 1945. Her findings were the subject of an exhibition titled: On British Soil: Victims of Nazi Persecution in the Channel Islands at the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide from October 2017 to February 2018. The exhibit is a permanent online exhibition at the library.^[21]^[22]

When a Staffordshire University team led by Sturdy Colls visited the island to investigate for a 2019 Smithsonian Channel documentary, entitled Adolf Island,^[16] the Alderney Government withdrew previously-agreed permission for them to excavate the Lager Sylt site.^[23] There were also complaints from the Jewish community regarding the potential disturbance of remains.^[24] In 2022, Sturdy Colls said her investigations of the island gave her an estimate of between 701 and 986 deaths.^[3]

In summer 2023, Lord Eric Pickles, UK special envoy on post-Holocaust issues, ordered an inquiry into the atrocities committed in Alderney and assembled a panel of Holocaust experts to conduct it.^[2]^[25] The report was published in May 2024 and concluded that at least 7,608–7,812 people were sent to the camps, of whom almost 100 died before reaching Alderney, and "the number of deaths in Alderney is unlikely to have exceeded 1,134 people, with a more likely range of deaths being between 641 to 1,027".^[13]

Notes

^ Matisson Consultants, Aurigny; un camp de concentration nazi sur une île anglo-normande (English: Alderney, a Nazi concentration camp on an Anglo-Norman island ) (in French), archived from the original on 20 February 2014, retrieved 6 June 2009
^ ^a ^b Owen, Brodie (27 July 2023). "Alderney WW2 deaths review aims to put conspiracies to rest". BBC News. Archived from the original on 29 July 2023. Retrieved 29 July 2023.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Cockerell, Isobel (26 July 2022). "The Nazi concentration camps on British soil the UK government tried to forget". Coda Media. Archived from the original on 20 November 2022. Retrieved 20 November 2022.
^ Moses, Claire (3 March 2024). "This Small Island Has a Dark History". The New York Times. Vol. 173, no. 60082. p. A4. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 3 March 2024.
^ Christian Streit: Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die Sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen, 1941-1945, Bonn: Dietz (3. Aufl., 1. Aufl. 1978), ISBN 3-8012-5016-4 - "Between 22 June 1941 and the end of the war, roughly 5.7 million members of the Red Army fell into German hands. In January 1945, 930,000 were still in German camps. A million at most had been released, most of whom were so-called "volunteers" (Hilfswillige) for (often compulsory) auxiliary service in the Wehrmacht. Another 500,000, as estimated by the Army High Command, had either fled or been liberated. The remaining 3,300,000 (57.5% of the total) had perished."
^ ^a ^b Subterranea Britannica (February 2003), SiteName: Lager Sylt Concentration Camp, archived from the original on 16 April 2019, retrieved 6 June 2009
^ Turner, Barry (1 April 2011). Outpost of Occupation: The Nazi Occupation of the Channel Islands, 1940-1945. Aurum Press. ISBN 978-1845136222.
^ ^a ^b Dafter, Ray (2001). Guernsey Wrecks. Matfield Books. ISBN 0-9540595-0-6.
^ "M/V XAVER DORSCH (1940-1944)". archeosousmarine.net. Archived from the original on 27 March 2016. Retrieved 27 December 2015.
^ Rohwer, Jürgen; Gerhard Hümmelchen. "Seekrieg 1942, Juli" (in German). Württemberg State Library. Archived from the original on 5 July 2022. Retrieved 31 May 2022.
^ Cruickshank, Charles (30 June 2004). The German Occupation of the Channel Islands. The History Press. ISBN 978-0750937498.
^ Frederick Cohen, President of the Jersey Jewish Congregation The Jews in the Channel Islands During the German Occupation 1940-1945
^ ^a ^b Sherwood, Harriet (22 May 2024). "More than 1,000 slave labourers may have died in Nazi camps on Alderney, review finds". The Guardian.
^ Guy Walters, The Occupation; ISBN 0-7553-2066-2
^ "Nazi Crimes on Trial". expostfacto.nl. Archived from the original on 27 September 2022. Retrieved 9 October 2022.
^ ^a ^b Adolf Island, 19 June 2019, archived from the original on 27 November 2020, retrieved 13 November 2020
^ Colls, Caroline Sturdy; Colls, Kevin (15 March 2022). 'Adolf Island': The Nazi occupation of Alderney. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-1-5261-4905-3. Archived from the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 25 October 2022.
^ ^a ^b "Authors claim UK covered up tens of thousands dead at Nazi camps on Channel Island". The Times of Israel. 8 May 2017. Archived from the original on 30 November 2022. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
^ ^a ^b "Alderney historian challenges new Nazi occupation claims". BBC News. 9 May 2017. Archived from the original on 30 November 2022. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
^ Philpot, Robert (11 July 2020). "'The most terrible camp': After 80 years, cruelty of SS site on UK soil revealed". The Times of Israel. Archived from the original on 30 November 2022. Retrieved 30 November 2022.
^ "On British Soil: Victims of Nazi Persecution in the Channel Islands". Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide. Archived from the original on 19 December 2020. Retrieved 7 November 2019.
^ Cruikshank, Charles (1975). The German Occupation of the Channel Islands. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0192158086.
^ "States of Alderney denies cover up on wartime deaths". guernseypress.com. Archived from the original on 18 December 2021. Retrieved 18 December 2021.
^ Sugarman, Daniel (18 June 2019). "Historian accused of having tried to dig up Holocaust dead against Jewish wishes". The Jewish Chronicle. Archived from the original on 26 January 2021. Retrieved 18 December 2020.
^ Pogrund, Gabriel (22 July 2023). "Inquiry into Channel Island Nazi death camps". The Times. Archived from the original on 28 July 2023. Retrieved 28 July 2023.