Nazis killed more people on Channel Islands than previously recorded
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The Nazis killed more people on the Channel Islands than previously recorded, a new report has found.
More than 1,000 people may have died in concentration camps on Alderney, according to a review led by Lord Pickles, the UK’s Special Envoy on Post-Holocaust issues.
The report added that at least 97 more died in transit to or from the island, 70 miles off the English coast, which housed “the most westerly concentration camp in the Third Reich”.
The report said that labourers on the island “were subject to atrocious living and working conditions, which included starvation, long working hours, completing dangerous construction works, beatings, maiming, torture, being housed in inadequate accommodation and, in some cases, executions”.
Figures calculated after Alderney’s liberation by the British originally suggested that 389 people died, but the new report has said that the “more likely range of deaths” was between 641 and 1,027.
Prof Anthony Glees, who worked on the review, “found not one but a succession of cover-ups” of what happened on Alderney, the report said.
He found that war crimes investigations undertaken by the British were “wholly serious in intent” but that the case was handed to the Russians because the majority of victims were from the Soviet Union.
In exchange, the report said, the British were given the Germans who murdered British servicemen during the Great Escape, and the Soviet Union ultimately decided not to follow up the case of Alderney.
Lord Pickles wrote: “Today, it is famous for its beauty, tranquillity and the welcome of its residents. From 1940 until Liberation, for most of those sent to the island, Alderney was hell on earth.”
He added: “While it is intriguing that the fate of the Nazi murderers on Alderney was intimately linked to the PoW breakout at Stalag Luft III (The Great Escape), they should have faced British justice.
“The fact that they did not is a stain on the reputations of successive British governments.”
People of around 30 nationalities were sent to Alderney, including Russian, Ukrainian, French, Dutch and British.
The report found that there were around 20 sites across the island, including four main camps.
However, it said that there was no evidence that many thousands of people died on Alderney, despite speculation.
“Claims that Alderney constituted a ‘mini-Auschwitz’ are wholly unsubstantiated,” the report said.
Lord Pickles wrote: “As the UK’s Special Envoy on Post Holocaust Issues, I have encountered many arguments over numbers.
“Nothing compares to the virulence or personal nature of arguments over numbers in Alderney.
“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 added: “Numbers do matter. 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.”
