The Alderney camps were camps built and operated by Nazi Germany during its World War II occupation of the Channel Islands. [1] Alderney island had four forced/slave labour sites, including Lager Sylt, the only Nazi concentration camp on British soil during the wartime occupation. [2]
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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]
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 ]
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 ]
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
After World War II, a court-martial case was prepared against former SS Hauptsturmführer Maximilian List, citing atrocities on Alderney. [12] However, he did not stand trial,[ why? ] and is believed to have lived near Hamburg until his death in the 1980s. [13]
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. [14] [15] [16]
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, [17] [3] and that Alderney had been turned into "a secret base to launch V1 missiles with chemical warheads on the South Coast." [17] [18] [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". [18] 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." [19]
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. [20] [21]
When a Staffordshire University team led by Sturdy Colls visited the island to investigate for a 2019 Smithsonian Channel documentary, entitled Adolf Island, [15] the Alderney Government withdrew previously-agreed permission for them to excavate the Lager Sylt site. [22] There were also complaints from the Jewish community regarding the potential disturbance of remains. [23] In 2022, Sturdy Colls said her investigations of the island gave her an estimate of between 701 and 986 deaths. [3]
In 2023, Lord Eric Pickles, UK special envoy on post-Holocaust issues, in summer 2023 ordered an inquiry into the atrocities committed in Alderney and started gathering a panel of Holocaust experts who will publish their findings in March 2024. [24]
49°43′N2°12′W / 49.717°N 2.200°W
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The North Frisian Islands are the Frisian Islands off the coast of North Frisia.
The East Frisian Islands are a chain of islands in the North Sea, off the coast of East Frisia in Lower Saxony, Germany. The islands extend for some 90 kilometres (56 mi) from west to east between the mouths of the Ems and Jade / Weser rivers and lie about 3.5 to 10 km offshore. Between the islands and the mainland are extensive mudflats, known locally as Watten, which form part of the Wadden Sea. In front of the islands are Germany's territorial waters, which occupy a much larger area than the islands themselves. The islands, the surrounding mudflats and the territorial waters form a close ecological relationship. The island group makes up about 5% of the Lower Saxony Wadden Sea National Park.
Alderney is the northernmost of the inhabited Channel Islands. It is part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, a British Crown dependency. It is 3 miles (5 km) long and 1+1⁄2 miles (2.4 km) wide.
Organisation Todt was a civil and military engineering organisation in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, named for its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior member of the Nazi Party. The organisation was responsible for a huge range of engineering projects both in Nazi Germany and in occupied territories from France to the Soviet Union during the Second World War. The organisation became notorious for using forced labour. From 1943 until 1945 during the late phase of the Third Reich, OT administered all constructions of concentration camps to supply forced labour to industry.
Neuengamme was a network of Nazi concentration camps in Northern Germany that consisted of the main camp, Neuengamme, and more than 85 satellite camps. Established in 1938 near the village of Neuengamme in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg, the Neuengamme camp became the largest concentration camp in Northwest Germany. Over 100,000 prisoners came through Neuengamme and its subcamps, 24 of which were for women. The verified death toll is 42,900: 14,000 in the main camp, 12,800 in the subcamps, and 16,100 in the death marches and bombings during the final weeks of World War II. Following Germany's defeat in 1945, the British Army used the site as an internment camp for SS and other Nazi officials. In 1948, the British transferred the land to the Free Hanseatic City of Hamburg, which summarily demolished the camp's wooden barracks and built in its stead a prison cell block, converting the former concentration camp site into two state prisons operated by the Hamburg authorities from 1950 to 2004. Following protests by various groups of survivors and allies, the site now serves as a memorial. It is situated 15 km southeast of the centre of Hamburg.
The German camps in occupied Poland during World War II were built by the Nazis between 1939 and 1945 throughout the territory of the Polish Republic, both in the areas annexed in 1939, and in the General Government formed by Nazi Germany in the central part of the country (see map). After the 1941 German attack on the Soviet Union, a much greater system of camps was established, including the world's only industrial extermination camps constructed specifically to carry out the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question".
Norderney is one of the seven populated East Frisian Islands off the North Sea coast of Germany.
Lager Sylt was a Nazi concentration camp on Alderney in the British Crown Dependency in the Channel Islands. Built in 1942, along with three other labour camps by the Organisation Todt, the control of Lager Sylt changed from March 1943 to June 1944 when it was run by the Schutzstaffel - SS-Baubrigade 1 and Lager Sylt became a subcamp of the Neuengamme concentration camp .
Lager Norderney was a Nazi concentration camp on Alderney, in the Channel Islands, named after the East Frisian island of Norderney.
Lager Borkum was a labour camp on Alderney, in the Channel Islands, named after the East Frisian Island of Borkum.
Lager Helgoland was a labour camp on Alderney in the Channel Islands, named after the Frisian Island of Heligoland, formerly a Danish and then British possession located 46 kilometres (29 mi) off the German North Sea coastline and belonging to Germany since 1890.
The military occupation of the Channel Islands by Nazi Germany lasted for most of the Second World War, from 30 June 1940 until liberation on 9 May 1945. The Bailiwick of Jersey and Bailiwick of Guernsey are British Crown dependencies in the English Channel, near the coast of Normandy. The Channel Islands were the only de jure part of the British Empire in Europe to be occupied by Nazi Germany during the war. Germany's allies Italy and Japan also occupied British territories in Africa and Asia, respectively.
Maximilian List was an architect in Berlin who became an SS officer, involved in the operation of a number of Nazi concentration camps.
Sylt may refer to:
Caroline Sturdy Colls is a British archaeologist and academic, specializing in Holocaust studies, identification of human remains, forensic archaeology and crime scene investigation. She is Professor of Conflict Archaeology and Genocide Investigation at Staffordshire University, and serves as director for the Centre of Archaeology there. She also undertakes consultancy for the UK Police forces. Her main area of interest is the methodology of investigation into the Holocaust and genocide murder sites with special consideration given to ethical and religious norms associated with the prohibition of excavating a grave.
Apart from a Roman Fort, there were very few fortifications in Alderney until the mid 19th century. These were then modified and updated in the mid 20th Century by Germans during the occupation period. Alderney at 8 km2 is now one of the most fortified places in the world.
SS-Truppenübungsplatz Heidelager was a World War II SS military complex and Nazi concentration camp in Pustków and Pustków Osiedle, Occupied Poland. The Nazi facility was built to train collaborationist military units, including the Ukrainian 14th Waffen SS Division "Galician", and units from Estonia. This training included killing operations inside the concentration camps – most notably at the nearby Pustków and Szebnie camps – and Jewish ghettos in the vicinity of the 'Heidelager'. The military area was situated in the triangle of the Wisła and San rivers, dominated by large forest areas. The centre of the Heidelager was at Blizna, the location of the secret Nazi V-2 missile launch site, which was built and staffed by prisoners from the concentration camp at Pustków.
A prison island is an island housing a prison. Islands have often been used as sites of prisons throughout history due to their natural isolation preventing escape.
Gillian "Gilly" Carr is a British archaeologist and academic. She currently specialises in the Holocaust and conflict archaeology, while her early career research focused on the Iron Age and Roman Archaeology. She is an associate professor and academic director in archaeology at the University of Cambridge's Institute of Continuing Education, and a fellow and director of studies in archaeology at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. In 2019, she was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and of the Royal Historical Society. In 2020, she won the EAA European Heritage Prize for her work on the heritage of victims of Nazism.
