Alderney remembers victims of Holocaust at a special service

Alderney Churches Together marked Holocaust Remembrance Day with a service at the Hammond Memorial for all the slave workers who died on the island during the Second World War.

Islanders gathered and held a minute’s silence after President William Tate laid a wreath beneath the main memorial tablet, marking the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp.

With the black-and-white striped tribute flag, representing the striped uniforms of the slave workers, and the Alderney flag streaming out above the ceremony in the high wind over the memorial, islanders gathered at the stone semi-circle which sits prominently at a crossroads overlooking the site of the Saye Bay slave workers’ camp and the Longis Common burial ground where many prisoners were interred.

After the island's vicar Jan Fowler said a prayer for the dead, Mr Tate reflected on the fate of so many foreign workers who perished on Alderney and told the 40 islanders present that the memorial day was not just for the six million Jews murdered under Nazi persecution, but to remember the other ethnic groups in genocides that followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

Guernsey will hold its own day to remember the Holocaust on Yom Hashoah – the day when Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It will take place on 28 April.