Alderney camps
The Alderney concentration camps were built and operated by Nazi Germany during its World War II occupation of the Channel Islands.[1] The Channel Islands were the only British Commonwealth soil to be occupied by the Nazis. The Nazis built four concentration camps on Alderney Island, subcamps of the Neuengamme camp outside Hamburg. They were named after the Frisian Islands: Lager Norderney, Lager Borkum, Lager Sylt and Lager Helgoland. The Nazi Organisation Todt operated each subcamp and used forced labour to build bunkers, gun emplacements, air-raid shelters, and concrete fortifications. The camps started working in January 1942 and had a total inmate population of about 6,000.
The Borkum and Helgoland camps were "volunteer" (Hilfswillige) labour camps[2] and the labourers in those camps were treated harshly but a little bit better than the inmates at the Sylt and Norderney camps. 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.[3] Norderney camp housed European (usually Eastern but including Spaniard) and Russian enforced labourers. Lager Borkum was used for German technicians and "volunteers" from different countries of Europe. Lager Helgoland was filled with Russian Organisation Todt workers.
In 1942, Lager Norderney, containing Russian and Polish POWs, and Lager Sylt, holding Jews, were placed under the control of the SS Hauptsturmführer Max List. Over 700 of the inmates lost their lives before the camps were closed and the remaining inmates transferred to Nazi Germany in 1944.[3]
War crime trials
changeAfter World War II, a court-martial case was prepared against ex-SS Hauptsturmführer Max List, citing atrocities on Alderney.[4] However, he did not stand trial, and is believed to have lived near Hamburg until his death in the 1980s.[5]
Notes
change- ↑ Matisson Consultants, Aurigny ; un camp de concentration nazi sur une île anglo-normande (English: Alderney, a Nazi concentration camp on an Anglo-Norman island ), archived from the original on 2014-02-20, retrieved 2009-06-06 (in French)
- ↑ Christian Streit: Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die Sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen, 1941-1945, Bonn: Dietz (3. Aufl., 1. Aufl. 1978), ISBN 3801250164 - "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 percent of the total) had perished."
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Subterranea Britannica (February 2003), SiteName: Lager Sylt Concentration Camp, retrieved 2009-06-06
- ↑ The Jews in the Channel Islands During the German Occupation 1940-1945, by Frederick Cohen, President of the Jersey Jewish Congregation, https://web.archive.org/web/20031217122111/http://www.jerseyheritagetrust.org/edu/resources/pdf/cijews.pdf
- ↑ Noted in The Occupation, by Guy Walters, ISBN 0-7553-2066-2