The Channel Islands At War (33 page)

Todt certificates were signed by sick bay staff who might be orderlies without medical knowledge, and copies of
these were sent to the bauleite
r, Cherbourg headquarters, and the Kommandantur. Burial was arranged by the firm of Kniffler. Mayne noticed the arrival on Jersey of coffins for this purpose, but on
Alderney
, besides ordinary coffins, there was found in May 1945 a coffin with a bottom trap which could be reused. Although this was found at Longy, it was the same as a ship's coffin for quick disposal at sea. The whole purpose of such burials was to conceal the evidence. Both Font and Prokop insisted bodies were thrown into the sea at Fort Clonque, a high point half a mile from Sylt. Misciewicz claimed prisoners who had died were thrown into the harbour, and speaks of a box being used over and over again. Eblagon and Prokop also said that this happened, and Font heard it happened from another Spanish prisoner. Occasionally bodies were washed up from
the sea, as one was in October 1942,
claimed to be that of a Russian esc
aper from Elizabeth Castle, but
later changed to a Frenchman.

Sylt SS death certificates were no more than routine documents, made up in advance. They were supposed to be signed by the camp medical officer, but as there was none at Sylt this task was performed by a military doctor. On one occasion when the Luftwaffe doctor Kohler was called in to sign, he refused to do so because there had been no post-mortem. These certificates concealed the fact that most deaths in Sylt were due to overwork and starvation. They also concealed which prisoners had been beaten to death, strangled or shot, and for all their apparent detail were often wrong.

When the British stepped ashore in Alderney, a week after liberation, the few Islanders there claimed there had been atrocities, and George Pope referred to a thousand deaths. This figure actually entered official documents at one point as a telegram from the British Embassy in Moscow to the Foreign Office (22 May 1945) refers to British authorities who 'are investigating suggestions of Germans killing one thousand Russians and Jews on Alderney during occupation'. In fact Pope was unable to prove his case. The landing forces had already come across Longy cemetery, with its marked graves, and two other graves containing 83 and 48 bodies respectively, over one of which they erected the first memorial. An investigation was carried out by Major Sidney Cotton, Captain G.C. Kent, and Major F.F. Haddock. They visited the camps, and Kent did a careful study of the graves on 7 June 1945. Their report has vanished.

The number of graves, and the certificates, provide some check on wild assertions, but they are incomplete, perhaps not accidentally. In the case of Sylt, there is every reason to suppose that up to a third of the thousand or so prisoners died on the Island or in tran
sit away from it. List and Klebe
ck speaking in 1943 saw it .is a camp whose inmates should be worked to death. Within a few months of their arrival, 200
were unfit to work, and in June 1943,
arrangements were made to transport them to Neuengamme. By the
time they left (a month later), 50 had died. Other transports left the Island
from time to time, and the master of the
Gerfriede
which used to move
Alderney prisoners was instructed t
o make conditions unpleasant by
Braun, the commandant. 280 prisoners we
re confined in a hold measuring
969 square feet. Some died on the voyage across. If horror stories of
deliberately walling up prisoners are unproven, there was no doubt deaths
due to hazardous work in building the fortifi
cations. Workers were killed by
RAF raids, and although no precise figures a
re given in the raid of January
1942, Ronald Mauger saw ambulances at
work throughout the night, and
believed there was 'heavy loss of life'.

Deaths from these various causes add 300 to the figure of just over 500 graves. It is difficult to be more precise, but the 'official' figure is too low.

For the Todt workers a grisly footnote was added in 1959. The British and German governments agreed in August that when the German dead, with the exception of those in Fort George, were removed to a m
ausoleum built at Mont-de-Huisne
s, Todt workers, too, would go and be counted as German war dead. The French association of former camp inmates objected, but was ignored. The eight identifiable Jewish graves were excluded, three removed for privat
e burial, and five being reburied at St Oue
n north of Paris. The mausoleum at Mont-de-Huisnes was dedicated in September 1963 and next to those whose government brought them to the Channel Isles, lie those who perished there as a result of German policy.

16

The Deportation of the Islanders

On 7 February 1943 an order from the Germans arrived in Sark for the deportation of between 30 and 40 people. This was the second deportation from the small Island, but the first had involved no more than 11 people. Served with an order telling them to report at the Gaumont Cinema in St Peter Port with 'warm clothes, solid boots, some provisions, meal-dishes, drinking bowl, and if possible a blanket', people had only a few days to prepare for a journey into the heart of Nazi Europe. The first Sark contingent contained Sibyl Hathaway's American-born husband, relatives of Island officials like the Carres, the vicar, Gilbert Phillips (removed, said Hathaway, because a pro-German person on the Island heard him criticizing Hitler too freely), Mrs Pittard (who had just returned from prison in Guernsey), Miss Duckett and Miss Page (who had managed the Dixcart Hotel where with Mrs Pittard's information the commandos had ended up), a number of elderly and single people who lived in the centre of the Island where the new strongpoint was sited, and the schoolmistress Miss Howard.

Five days later the first party left Sark. The vicar held prayers in the hall, and they set out with blankets and haversacks, 'all trying to bear up, bursting with grief inside'. It was blowing a blizzar
d on the day they arrived at Cre
ux harbour where 'Before we said goodbye to our friends they agreed that as they left the little harbour they would burst into song, and Norah said the tunnel echoed with "Pack Up Your Troubles" and "There'll always be an England".' (Julia
Tremayne
) Two weeks later, the remainder of the Sark contingent left.

Between 26 September 1942 and 25 February 1943 about 2,200 Channel Islanders were deported to half-a-dozen camps in France, Germany and Austria. This was four per cent of the population, and came to form half the interned British population in Germany. As a result of negotiations, 337 of them were repatriated because of age or illness before the end of the war. By the time the camps were freed in April 1945, 46 Islanders had died far from home, many of them elderly people for whom such disruption clearly proved the most serious additional burden. Some Islanders broke down menta
lly, and had to be left behind.
Deportation began as a result of Hitler's personal anger over an unrelated
matter; became an issue involvin
g the Fü
hrer's authority when by accident it was not carried out when ordered; and was finally used partly as a police measure to punish Islanders for the commando raid and successful escapes. Cruickshank performed the service of revealing for the first time the origins of the
F
ü
hrer befel
of 9 September 1942 which began deportation, and showed that deportation had been considered a year before, and that as usual the Island authorities had co-operated from the start in providing the necessary lists of people and making no protests.

In August 1941 Britain and Russia jointly occupied Persia (Iran) and deposed the pro-German Shah. There had been fears of a Nazi putsch, and some 500 Germans in the country were interned. Hitler's wish was that for every German interned ten 'British born' Channel Islanders - an ill-defined term throughout - should be interned in retaliation, and as there were approximately 6,000 'British' residents on the Islands, this seemed a neat solution.
On 16 September 1941, Coutanche
was told to provide the first of a number of lists of various groups of British residents and the lists were completed by 3 November. Carey on Guernsey had his lists ready seven days later. On 12 September, Hitler discussed the coming deportations saying he wanted the Islanders taken to the Pripet Marshes in Poland, and their property given to 'native-born' Islanders.

When the British government was told of German intentions via the protecting power their immediate reaction was muted indeed. It was no more than a comment that such action was a violation of the Hague Convention, illegal and inhumane. Churchill often listed Nazi 'crimes', but never referred to this particular one in the Commons. Impending deportation also broke the commandant's initial promise to respect the lives of the Islanders.

It was not until September 1942, when the protecting power suggested to the Germans that Islanders who wanted to go to England might be permitted to leave, that Hitler realized the 'English' Channel Islanders were still there. General Warlimont of OKW was asked to investigate, and his report found that, as so often happened in Nazi Germany, several authorities involved had been at cross-purposes. OKW in France had begun preparations, and located a camp near Cologne, but on checking with the Foreign Ministry they were told nothing was required, and so stopped preparations.

Warlimont's report ended with an extremely revealing passage. He stressed the military argument that there was no need for deportations. The population had been thoroughly loyal, there had been no military sabotage, and no passive resistance. German orders had been carried out quickly, and without obstruction by the Island authorities. But however successfully German policy was working this did not mean the Islanders were safe. Hitler was naturally furious as an order had not been carried out. A precise order was sent to Paris, and arrived in the Channel Islands on 15 September 1942. It was for the immediate deportation of all those without permanent residence on the Islands including those caught there by circumstance of war, and all men between 16 and 70 'who belong to the English people' together with their families.

There was a flurry of activit
y on the main Islands. Coutanche
said he

protested and the Jersey superior council considered resigning
en masse.
All that happened was that they did not issue the deportation orders themselves. Some people on Jersey had less than twelve hours to prepare for deportation on 16 September when 280 left the Island at nine in the evening. "Should you fail to obey the order", said Knackfuss 'sentence by court martial shall be effected'. Buses were laid on from the country where knots of people gathered at village halls while those in St Helier walked to the harbour. Maugham watched people walking with their heads held high, and left the scene 'with an unaccustomed constriction in my throat, but also burning with indignation and disgust". One man who collapsed was placed on a stretcher and carried aboard. Possibly this was J.P. Walters, aged sixty-eight, who died in the drear and rough conditions at Dorsten on 10 October. The St John Ambulance Association did their best to distribute food parcels. That evening the boat left, and those on Mount Bingham could hear patriotic songs as the ship pulled away. As the first group their worries must have been the greatest. Next day orders were issued for a second group to be ready for 18 September.

Public reaction to deportation began to gather strength, and took different forms. Apparently some girls contracted marriages with Islanders. Tragically a man and his wife at Beaumont were the first to attempt suicide, the woman dying in the attempt, and they were followed by others in the next few months. Medical exemptions were pressed to the uttermost. A few brave people volunteered to go in place of others. Three of the conscientious objectors who had come to do harvest work in 1940 went instead of a clergyman and his family. But in spite of all about 340 people were assembled at the Weighbridge on the evening of the 18th. Michael Ginns recalled how his father, an elderly, sick man, fortunately included later among those repatriated before April 1945, fainted, and was revived so he could go aboard. Two boats had arrived. The
La France
was all right, but the other was the
Robert M
ü
ller,
an unsatisfactory craft. As a result only about half those due to go left that evening and joined a convoy to St Malo at two in the morning. The rest were told to go home, and report again on the 25th. This led to further suffering where homes had been shut up, and even more disreputably, where people found their homes had already been broken into. The delays which included the ramming of a harbour crane by the reversing
La France
brought out crowds in the streets and the first public anti-German expressions of feeling.

On the 23rd came the third Jersey notice to assemble at the Weighbridge two days later, and on this occasion youngsters indulged in a small riot for which 14 people were arrested, and one man received three years imprisonment. There was a new feature of the list
of deportees. It included 20 Je
rseymen who had been convicted of offences by the Germans, although this group was reprieved at the last minute. This showed that the Kommandantur was starting to think deportation might be a way of removing small groups of potential troublemakers. On 29 September, although the sea was rough, two small boats with over 500 on board sailed out at twenty to nine in the evening. They only reached St Malo in the morning after many had been sea sick in rough conditions.