‘The truth can never harm us’
IT IS sobering to discover that there were hundreds more deaths in Alderney during the occupation years than previously authenticated. But the authorities in the island will know that it could have been so much worse – both then, and now.
The findings of the review commissioned by Lord Eric Pickles, the UK’s post Holocaust issues envoy, have reached a more conclusive figure, but no evidence to support claims of a ‘mini Auschwitz’ in the island.
Alderney States president William Tate, who attended the report’s launch in London yesterday, struck the right note when he said that Alderney would greet the report’s findings ‘with a mixture of relief and sadness’.
Times have been difficult for Alderney when more extreme estimates of deaths have been made, and it’s hard to disagree with Mr Tate when he welcomes the clarity the report provides, and the confidence that it should imbue within the island.
Alderney will never forget its Occupation past and the scars that it has left, but it can now go forward with the backing of clear evidence.
Lord Pickles said at the report’s launch in London that ‘the truth can never harm us’.
‘At a time when parts of Europe are seeking to rinse their history through the Holocaust, the British Isles must tell the unvarnished truth,’ he said.
‘It is as much of a Holocaust distortion to exaggerate the number of deaths as it is to underplay the numbers. Exaggeration plays into the hands of Holocaust deniers and undermines the six million dead.’