Information sign marks Lager Sylt site in Alderney
AN INFORMATION sign to mark the site of the Lager Sylt forced labour camp has been installed by Visit Alderney.
Lager Sylt, sited in the south of the island, was one of four forced labour camps built in Alderney during the Occupation during the Second World War.
A Visit Alderney spokesman said the sign was part of an ongoing initiative to enable visitors to have more information about the island.
Originally opened in 1942 by the Organisation Todt – the Nazi civil and military engineering organisation – the sign stated that the camp was converted into a forced labour camp after being taken over and enlarged by the SS in 1943.
The plaque states that more than 3,000 foreign workers were in the island, and it notes that many workers died as part of the ‘brutal SS regime of starvation, beatings and murder.’
It goes on to detail that much of the site was dismantled by the Occupying forces before the British arrived.
The sign is close to Lager Sylt’s original gateposts, which are one of the few remaining structures of the camp.
A plaque commemorating the slave labourers from all over Europe who lost their lives there was placed on the gateposts in 2008 and refers to the site as a concentration camp.
The latest sign is much more comprehensive about the history of the site and also gives details in French. But it instead refers to the site as a forced labour camp.
The definition of a concentration camp is somewhere a large number of people are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities.
The term is most strongly associated with camps established by the Nazis in Germany and occupied Europe 1933–45, including Dachau, Belsen, and Auschwitz.
The long-awaited inquiry into those who died and were interned in Alderney’s labour camps began last month, with its results expected to be published in March 2024.
