Names from war-time Alderney to be collected up by experts

Academics involved in creating the expert review of the number of deaths in Nazi camps in the island during the war, are now treating the collection of names as a follow-up project.

‘We have obviously for this review been focusing on numbers, we can now go back to the research we have done,' said Dr Gilly Carr from the University of Cambridge.

‘As we have completed the research we have compiled lists of labourers, and now it is a matter of the 12 members of the review panel gathering those names together and creating a database.’

She said she had personally gathered about 1,000 to 1,500 names during her part of the research and that colleagues had similar lists for their areas of expertise.

‘Of course not all the names are known, but every name rescued is a victory, and it is important to honour and commemorate the dead,’ she said.

‘Very few if any of those who survived Alderney are now with us, and even those who volunteered would have seen things they could not un-see.’

She added that the research, being funded by the University of Cambridge, should be finished by the end of the summer but she was not sure at this stage how it would be published.

‘There are GDPR [data protection] implications for releasing the names. And I am not sure if they would be published through a museum or available online. There are legal exemptions with regard to the holocaust, but we will follow advice and best practice and see which is the best way to proceed.’

Dr Carr ruled out the need to repeat the Alderney review for Guernsey.

‘Fundamentally, Alderney was different as there was no resident population to witness the behaviour of the Germans so they behaved very differently, they felt they could act with impunity,’ she said.

‘With Alderney there has been rumour and stories not backed up by evidence.

'I don’t think people have the same concerns for Guernsey and Jersey as there have not been the same historic allegations.’

She added that there were also already publicly-accessible lists and data bases for the occupation in for Guernsey and Jersey.

More than 16,000 workers from Organisation Todt, the Nazi civil and military engineering organisation were brought to the Channel Islands during the Occupation, of whom an estimated 7,000 came to Guernsey.

Of the 96 OT workers who died in Guernsey, the majority died as a result of tunnelling accidents, a British bombing raid on St Peter Port in January 1942, and a typhus outbreak in February 1943.