The tiny Channel Island of Alderney is a hidden gem, with stunning beaches and abundant wildlife. But it is also the only place on British soil that housed a Nazi concentration camp.
Earlier this year, a review of atrocities there concluded that not only did many more people die than originally claimed, but there was a cover-up by British authorities. Now a new two-part series from Sky History, Hitler’s British Island, looks at Alderney’s gruesome wartime past.
For Hitler, occupying the Channel Islands was the first step towards an invasion of Britain. Alderney, codenamed “Adolf” by the Nazis, was evacuated by the Royal Navy after the fall of France in 1940. Of a population of approximately 1,500, only a few remained.
Among those who stayed was sailor George Pope, his wife and their four children. His daughter Janet remembers life under the occupation in the documentary. ‘My mother refused to speak German, but the children learned to say “Guten tag” and the Germans loved it because we were the only children on the island. Every day was a struggle to find food. From time to time soldiers would appear at the door with their big boots to see if there was anything that shouldn’t be there.
A two-part Sky History series, Hitler’s British Island, looks at Alderney’s gruesome wartime past.
Alderney, codenamed ‘Adolf’ by the Nazis, was evacuated by the Royal Navy after the fall of France in 1940.
In 1941, Hitler ordered Alderney to be fortified as part of his “Atlantic Wall” to safeguard his new territory, and suddenly the island was filled with slave laborers and the soldiers who oversaw them. In 1943 there were 3,200 Nazis and more than 4,000 prisoners in Alderney, housed in four camps. Three were forced labor camps. The fourth, Lager Sylt, was run by the SS. This was where the Jews were imprisoned and it was the harshest place on the island.
“We knew pretty well what was going on,” Janet says. ‘People starving and being beaten to death. There were a couple of incidents where someone was caught stealing food and I think everyone heard the screams.
When the island was liberated in 1945, British military investigator Captain Theodore Pantcheff was sent to Alderney. He interviewed George Pope, who gave him a list that he said a Nazi had given him with the names of 1,000 people who had been murdered on the island. But Pantcheff wasn’t sure he could trust Pope: was he a collaborator? Pope had been a supporter of Oswald Mosley, although Janet insists that her father had fallen out with Mosley because of his anti-Semitism, and had even tried to punch the fascist leader when he saw him in the street.
‘There was no other option than my father having a relationship with the Nazis. They took him to the commander’s office, who said, “Do you have a family?” And when my father said yes, he said, “And I have a gun.”
Nazi soldiers with a woman on the island in 1942.
‘Before the liberation, a German officer gave him a stolen document, and when the British arrived, my father invited a couple of officers to our house and said: “Here you are. It’s a German document about the deaths. Look at the badge.”
The Pope’s list was never seen again, and Pantcheff’s final report led to an official figure of 389 people murdered in Alderney. But rumors of mass deaths continued.
Earlier this year, a new report into the atrocities in Alderney found that between 641 and 1,027 people had died under the “brutality, sadism and murder” of the Nazis, and that a “succession of cover-ups” was a ” stain on the reputation of successive British governments. The British authorities had hidden behind an agreement between the allies according to which each would be responsible for prosecuting war crimes perpetrated against their own populations. Although the horrors took place on British soil, it was decided that the USSR should try the Nazis because most of the prisoners were Russians.
The Soviet Union “decided to do nothing” with the tests. No one was ever brought to justice. But at least now the story is told.
- Hitler’s British Island, Tuesday, 9pm, Sky History.
