The Channel Islands At War (35 page)

Red Cross reports commented unfavourably on Channel Islanders' apathy towards work. Morale also depended on camp leaders and their committees, and here the camps varied. At Wurzach Captain Hilton was described by Red Cross delegates as not suitable for his task because he 'docs not act as he should and is not sufficiently severe'. During 1943 matters grew steadily worse. After sharp practice over the camp bread supply was revealed by the Island doctor, Doctor Oliver, the bread committee resigned, but Oliver was undermined, and left for another camp. An American replacement, Doctor Roscoe, soon came into conflict with Hilton, and began to create an oppposition. On 16 March, Major Fraser was given five days solitary confinement by the disciplinary tribunal. Trouble continued, and in November Roscoe, and three other men were removed from the camp by the German police. Hilton managed to get himself re-elected camp leader after this, but the wives of the men concerned became thorns in his flesh. Representatives of the protecting power and the foreign office visited the camp, but rejected demands for transfers. Hilton resigned due to poor health in the summer of 1944. Garland at Biberach, and Stroobant and Sherwill at Laufen, proved much better administrators, although Sherwill showed he had not forgotten he was a member of the Island ruling class when he permitted those of officer rank to be exempt from certain fatigues.

The internees were not POWs and there was no responsibility on them to escape, although Stroobant mentions that some did try it from Laufen only to be quickly recaptured. At the other extreme, camp inmates were subject to German propaganda. John Lingsham from Jersey chose to leave Laufen and work for Goebbels' Concordia Bureau for which he received five years in prison after the war.

Most interestingly of all, Frank Stroobant and Wynne Sayer were selected to join a party of foreigners dispatched to Smolensk to be given evidence that the Katyn Massacre had been carried out by the Russians. At Smolensk they were well looked after and photographed before being driven the fifteen miles or so to the forest a few days later. When they returned to the barracks at Smolensk there was a marvellous evening meal, and, remakably enough, 'every English-speaking German east of the Rhine' was there. One of them assured Stroobant he had been born in north London and was an Arse
nal supporter. Stroobant says, ‘I
told him in so many words ... I had no intention of doing anything which might result in my neck being stretched after the war was over.' It is likely that
this was an attempt to inviegle
Stroobant into the British Fric Korps. One of them, Dennis John, was the son of a German baker in north London, and had been to Jersey.

Some internees did not complete the full period of internment. There were 46 deaths in Germany among the Islanders. At Wurzach there were 12 deaths, and they were buried in the town cemetery where a monument in Jersey stone now stands. At Laufen ten deaths were recorded, although nothing e
lse is known about them. At Bibe
rach there were 20 deaths ranging from a small girl of two to an old man of 74.

The other group of internees who did not serve the full term were those repatriated early. According to Cruickshank
it was Britain in December 1943
which took the initiative in proposing an exchange of 600 of the Islanders, but Harris says it was the camp leaders like Stroobant and Hilton who raised the issue with the Germans, and that, as a result, in February
1943
discussion of repatriation began. The trouble was that Islanders might not have any home in Britain, and the home office thought that 'they should stand down in favour of those whose ties are here'. As a result of such quibbles no Channel Islanders were included in the first batch of 1944 repatriates. Questions were asked in parliament, and 125 were included in the second exchange, and arrived at Liverpool on 15 September 1944. A further group arrived at Liverpool on 23 March 1945.

For the rest there were to be two and a half years of camp life in Germany. At Laufen Stroobant and Sherwill ruled effectively through an advisory committee, and a tribunal elected by secret ballot to hear disciplinary cases. The camp was run smoothly with a large number of classes and entertainments, and plenty of sport. The German Kommandant Kochenberger, disliked Nazis, and got on well with the internees. He knew that Stroobant and others had managed to construct a wireless, and warned them when a Gestapo search was about to take place. Wurzach with its poor organization and disputes seems to have been a much more miserable camp. Overcrowding was made worse by the inflow of inmates from mid-1944, and by early next year people were 30 to a room. There were severe shortages at first, and in December 1942 Doughty wrote that they were living on potato peelings. Later conditions improved, only to deteriorate again when fuel ran low, and Christmas 1944—5 passed without parcels. Although medicines were in good supply, and treatment available at three local hospitals, the camp infirmary was small, and had to cope with such events as a scarlet fever outbreak, and typhoid or septicaemia caused by mosquitoes during the summer.

At Bibe
rach, on the other hand, under Garfield Garland's leadership unsatisfactory conditions to start with were transformed into a successfully run camp by the middle of 1943. It was at Biberach that the communal bath which shocked Mrs Cortvriend was found; in fact this was one of the best facilities. Food, too, was short at first, but by early 1943 Red Cross parcels began to arrive every 12 days. The camp worked well with amateur dramatics, keep fit and educational classes.

Liberation from the camps was a moment of immense joy. Biberach was first on St George's Day, 23 April 1945. After four more weeks in the camp for interviews by intelligence officers, and the issuing of identity papers, they boarded Dakotas at an American base and flew home. At Wurzach, Preston Doughty recorded the final week in his diary. First came retreating Germans, hundreds of planes passed overhead shaking the building, and at last French tanks were in action in the next village. On Saturday 28 April, 'a tank was seen coming over the top of the hill which leads down into the village, great excitement took place at the camp, the tank had stopped, and the least sign of opposition would have been the end of many British subjects in the camp, because as the French told us afterwards all their guns were trained on this building thinking it to be a German headquarters. The French did not know we were here, so we in the camp owe our lives to the German
Volksstorm
[Home Guard], the old men of the village, who ran towards the tanks with white flags. The first tank pulled up outside the camp at 12.15, a great shout went up, and a Union Jack was flown from the balcony.' Between 2 and 9 June, the Wurzach internees were flown home.

The Americans liberated Laufen on 4 May as the 40th Armoured Division entered the area. They were flown home after some delays from Salzburg airport, and like the others went to Stanmore for a debriefing during which they were carefully questioned about any possible German brutality, and asked to describe German conduct on the Islands as well. Then, loaded with forms, they could board the boat from Weymouth and return to the Islands.

17

The Fate of the Jews on the Islands

The 450,000 members of the British Jewish community were among the luckiest of their faith during the Second World War. Listed for extermination at the infamous Wansee Conference they escaped the Holocaust.

One small group of British Jews on the Channel Islands had to face the Nazis, and their fate is the concern of this chapter. Remarkably enough, it is still unclear what happened
to this tiny group. Angus Calde
r said, 'several were dispatched to an obscure fate on the Continent'. Norman Longmate said they were deported. 'Nothing', he said, 'seems to have been done to save them and their fate is uncertain'. Later he elaborated a little more by saying, 'some seem to have been murdered in German camps'. Others have been more misleading by suggesting no harm befell them. Frank Falla said that Louis Cohen and a couple of other Jewish businessmen left with the 1940 evacuees, and that the German search of Island records for Jews proved unsuccessful. Raymond Falla, head of the purchasing mission, actually stated there was a decision 'not to co-operate with the Germans in their anti-Jewish policy', which was the reverse of the truth. Alexander Coutanche was suitably vague saying, 'The Jews were, I think, called upon to declare themselves. Some did, some didn't... Those who didn't weren't discovered. I've never heard they suffered in any way'. It seems he and others chose to ignore the significance of having to mark Jews with a red 'J' in the lists of various groups on the Islands they were required to compile.

The Island governments were not guilty of sending anyone to their death in the way the Vichy authorities were across the water, but they did collaborate administratively in the process by which the small number of Island Jews were first of all punished, and then deported. Early in 1939 Hitler said Europe would not find peace until the Jewish question was settled. If there was war caused, as he put it, by international Jewish finance, the result would be 'the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe'. The small number of Island Jews, particularly those who had come from Austria in 1937
-
8
,
would have been fully aware of these dangers, and for that reason some of them at least left the Islands in June 1940.

In November
1940, A.J. Rousscl, the greffie
r on Guernsey, received the following letter, a copy of which was sent to the Kommandantur.

Dear Sir, I consider it my duty to inform you that I am renting the premises known as 'The Exact' 27 Commercial Arcade, Guernsey, from Mr David Rudnidsky, whom I believe is a Jew. and when last heard of was resid
ing at 7 Winchester Road, Andove
r, Hants, England.' The Middleviks who conducted a clothing business in St Peter Port had been among the evacuees, and their business was handed over to the Germans. In some cases the Germans were more destructive. Egypt Farm on Jersey was ransacked because its absent owner was Jewish.

Action against Jews in the Channel Islands began in September and October 1940 at the same time as anti-Semitic laws were introduced in France. The first regulations issued on 27 September stated that any person with more than two Jewish grandparents was a Jew and that all such people together with their families must present themselves for registration. All remaining Jewish businesses were to be labelled 'Jewish Undertaking' in English, French and German, and such signs began to appear in the few shops concerned - there were only three in Jersey. Imprisonment, fines, and confiscation were the penalties for failure to comply.

The second set of orders in October stated an administrator for Jewish affairs would be appointed. This was Doctor Casper of the Kommandantur whose orders applied in both Islands, and who, according to Steckoll, communicated with the SS in Paris asking for yellow cloth stars printed in English to be sent to the Islands. Further financial provisions followed. Any legal transactions after 23 May 1940 by Jews were declared invalid.

In May 1941 came the third and final set of orders referring to the Jews, apart from the enforcement of a tighter curfew on them in June 1942. Those with two or more grandparents even married to Jews became liable to register. The administrator was to take over Jewish businesses that had been discovered, with instructions to grant allowances to the former owners only for 'absolute necessities'. There was to be no compensation. Lastly, Jews were banned from entering all kinds of public places. On Guernsey, Carey faithfully reported that two Jewish women on the Island had been warned not to enter restaurants in September 1942.

Before these measures could be properly enforced, registration was vital. Cruickshank noticed Kommandantur and other Island records dealing with police and Jewish matters had disappeared although such records had clearly been kept as surviving indexes show. In 1982, a book by Solomon Steckoll included a small fragment of the administrative correspondence of the Guernsey Controlling Committee. Although the letters are few they are extremely important. There is no reason to think they differ in tone from those destroyed and their tone is conciliatory in the extreme, even allowing for the more courtly style of official correspondence in the 1940s. Although Carey is supposed to have taken a back seat, in this matter as in others he acted directly as bailiff and governor.

In the original occupation orders it was stated the Island governments were required to register all German e
dicts, and this meant that they
would appear under the Royal Coat of Arms after the greffier had carried out official registration. On Guernsey the first anti-Jewish measures were registered on 23 October. This gave the weight of Royal authority and Island government to a German order which, if it had been published without them would have been seen as something opposed by the Island government.

The letters show the Island authorities performed their duties willingly when it came to carrying out the laws. Sherwill wrote after the event, i still feel ashamed that I did not do something by way of protest to the Germans'; but whereas in other administrative matters formal protests were registered, in this case not even that was done. In October 1940, Carey replied to a request to know how the list of Jews was proceeding by saying Inspector Sculpher had prepared a report. There had been some delay caused by bad weather in getting a reply from Sark. i can assure you that there will be no delay, in so far as I am concerned, in furnishing you with the information you require,' said Carey. Two days later the Sark details had arrived, and he hastened to inform Brosch of this.