Expert panel to investigate deaths at Alderney Nazi concentration camps

The government has announced a review of evidence into the number of prisoners who died on the Channel Island of Alderney during the Nazi occupation.

Lord Eric Pickles, the United Kingdom’s Post Holocaust Issues Envoy and Head of UK Delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance has appointed a team of eleven independent, experienced, and internationally recognised experts to build on pre-existing knowledge to examine files from archives across Europe to identify what they consider to be the most accurate number of people who died under the occupation.

During the Second World War Nazi Germany occupation of the Channel Islands, four concentration camps were built on Alderney, including SS Lager Sylt which housed Jewish slave labourers.

There has been considerable speculation in recent years over numbers of individuals murdered by the conditions in the camps.

A statement from the office of Lord Pickles says the camps in Alderney were “significant in the history of the Holocaust not just because they were sited on British soil, but because they provide evidence of ‘extermination through labour’ (Vernichtung durch Arbeit) in the construction of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall.”

Lord Pickles said: “Numbers matter because the truth matters. The dead deserve the dignity of the truth; the residents of Alderney deserve accurate numbers to free them from the distortion of conspiracy theorists. Exaggerating the numbers of the dead, or even minimising them, is in itself a form of Holocaust distortion and a critical threat to Holocaust memory and to fostering a world without genocide.

“The review will give historians, journalists, residents, and anyone with a theory an opportunity to explore their thoughts with eleven of the world’s leading experts, in an atmosphere that combines openness with academic rigour. All are welcome.

“I hope this review will put to rest conspiracy theories on numbers and provide lasting dignity to the dead and some peace to the residents of Alderney who continue to remember them at the Hammond War Memorial every year in May.”

The panel will be “receiving expert assistance” from the Archives at Yad Vashem, the world’s preeminent Holocaust Centre, in order to locate relevant documentation related to Alderney.

The expert group will announce their findings in a report to be published in March 2024. They are:

• Project chair: Dr Paul Sanders (NEOMA Business School, Reims, France)

• Professor Marc Buggeln (Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany)

• Dr Gilly Carr (University of Cambridge UK)

• Dr Daria Cherkaska (Staffordshire University, UK)

• Mr Kevin Colls, MSc (Staffordshire University, UK)

• Dr Karola Fings (Heidelberg University, Germany)

• Professor Fabian Lemmes (Universität des Saarlandes, Germany)

• Benoit Luc, MA (Directeur du Service Départemental de l’Office National des Combattants et Victimes de Guerre de Loire-Atlantique, France)

• Jurat Colin Partridge OBE (Alderney)

• Professor Caroline Sturdy Colls (Staffordshire University, UK)

• Professor Robert Jan Van Pelt (University of Waterloo, Canada)

The panel are inviting members of the public to take part in the review of evidence and submissions will be reviewed as part of their research.

If anybody wishes to submit their own evidence, files, or calculations of the number of the dead or of the number of forced and slave labourers / prisoners who passed through Alderney, they should do so using the instructions provided below.

The deadline for submissions by members of the public is
1 November 2023. All submissions must adhere to the requested specified format and should be sent by email here.

Detailed instructions on how to submit submissions can be found here.