Alderney wartime atrocities back in national headlines
ALDERNEY’S war-time history is back in the national news after The Observer wrote yesterday that the UK government inquiry into Nazi wartime atrocities in the island had been extended to investigate why none of the Nazi perpetrators responsible for the crimes was put on trial in Britain.
The review was originally set up to review the number of victims in camps in the island and is expected to report later this month.
The newspaper said that new evidence seen by the inquiry, which is being conducted by a panel of international experts, described atrocities in Alderney as ‘systematic terrorism’ involving ‘murder and massacre’ and torture.
The inquiry has also been examining whether there was a government cover-up at the time to ensure the full extent of the horrors was kept from the British public.
The newspaper said that it was expected that the report would conclude it was impossible to come to an exact figure on the ‘many hundreds’ of Nazi prisoners killed on the island due to issues with documentation, and the belief that corpses were often dumped into the sea.
Most of the victims were slave labourers from Russia brought to the island to build Adolf Hitler’s so-called Atlantic Wall concrete defence network, but other victims were from 20 countries including France, Spain, Germany and Poland.
The Observer said that despite a post-war military investigation carried out in Alderney, which came up with an extensive list of war criminals, the UK government decided not to prosecute German officers as early as July 1945, against the instructions of the Moscow Declaration, which made it clear that those responsible for Nazi atrocities should be tried in the country where the crimes were committed.
The Observer quoted Lord Pickles on the extension of the inquiry yesterday as saying: ‘This is important not just because these events happened on British soil, but because the barbarity and inhumanity were felt with full force here.
‘From the very beginning, the big question was why there were no war crimes trials for the atrocities committed there.’
Lord Pickles visited Guernsey earlier this year, and at an after dinner speech, criticised reporting in The Observer of the end of last year of a story that Heinrich Himmler had ordered the mass execution of prisoners in Alderney – a revelation that he said was 30 years old and already published online.
On social media yesterday, in response to the story, he said that he had not yet seen the full review. ‘It promises to answer many questions and has a shocking connection to an infamous incident towards the end of WW2 in mainland Europe.’
In response, the British Channel Islands WW2 Remembrance Campaign said on X, formerly Twitter: ‘We are deeply concerned that greater public will think murders only took place on Alderney. Slave labour also brought to Jersey and Guernsey. Clear evidence of murders on main islands also.’
