Nazi Crimes on Alderney: The Forgotten Concentration Camp in the English Channel

Nazi crimes on Alderney
The forgotten concentration camp in the English Channel

By Kevin Schulte
08/02/2023 3:11 p.m

During World War II, the National Socialists built a concentration camp and several labor camps on the island of Alderney in the English Channel. At least 700 prisoners are killed. For decades, the British government has remained silent about the full extent of Nazi crimes. That should change.

The “Camp Sylt” is an almost forgotten part of the long list of Nazi crimes. A concentration camp on an island. Not on Sylt, as the name suggests, but on Alderney. The six by two kilometer small island is located in the English Channel, closer to France than to Great Britain – but is still subordinate to the British crown. In 1940, in the middle of World War II, Nazi Germany occupied the island. At this point it was already completely empty: the British government around Prime Minister Winston Churchill had evacuated the islanders and left Alderney to the Nazis without a fight.

The attacker took advantage of that. Nazi Germany built a concentration camp and three labor camps on Alderney. At least 1000 prisoners were housed in the concentration camp, the “Sylt Camp”, from 1943 for a little over a year. The subcamp was subordinate to the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg. 3000 forced laborers were also brought to the island. They slaved away in the labor camps, which the Nazis also named after German North Sea islands: Borkum, Heligoland, and Norderney.

“Machinery of Death”

“Extermination by labor took place on Alderney,” says historian Marcus Roberts on British television at ITV tells and thus refers to a report by the British military secret service, which had investigated the events on Alderney in 1945 immediately after the end of the world war. The documentation was supposed to remain locked for exactly 100 years, but a copy of the report was leaked in 2021. “The machinery of death on the island is very clearly reported,” says Roberts. The prisoners on Alderney were systematically killed through the hard work. Others died from lethal injections, torture or shootings.

However, nothing more concrete is known about the Nazi crimes on Alderney. 80 years have now passed since concentration camps and labor camps were set up on the island. 80 years in which surprisingly few details of the Nazi crimes on the island were clarified. The British government now wants to change that and finally bring the full extent of the reign of terror on Alderney to light.

The panel can get clues from the research team led by the archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls find. The Staffordshire University professor and her colleagues meticulously studied Alderney for almost ten years. In doing so, she used historical aerial photographs and old records, but also the latest methods such as invasive surveying techniques and ground-penetrating radar.

The team found that, at best, each prisoner had just five square feet of space. The research team also created a 3D model of a tunnel that led from the Nazi commandant’s house to the concentration camp grounds. Colls summarized the findings of her work in her book “Adolf Island”, which was published in 2022.

Two mass graves discovered

The number of deaths is a big unknown: the difference between the estimates is immense, according to the British Holocaust Commissioner, Lord Eric Pickles “Observer” said. “I think it’s reasonable for everyone to put the facts on the table, for all deliberations to be made public. It seems pointless to me that people are yelling at each other.” That’s why Pickles wants to bring together a panel of international experts this summer.

Archaeologist Colls writes that at least 701 people have been killed on the island. “But it is very likely that this number will have to be increased to at least 986, since we have several witnesses who speak of several mass executions that took place on the island,” said the researcher at one last year Event of the Vienna Holocaust Library reported.

Even the most cautious scientists are now assuming that at least 700 to 1,000 people have died. Some even speak of several thousand victims and suspect further mass graves on the island. Colls and her team have already discovered two. There could be a lot more.

The panel of experts should not only clarify the number of deaths. It is also intended to answer the question of why Great Britain has not dealt with a mass murder on the Channel Island for decades. Or deliberately covered it up, as historian Roberts accuses the government of.

Commander lived undisturbed in Germany

No one was ever charged for the Alderney atrocities, and the official intelligence report became a state secret. Only the Soviet Union received it. Because Russians were supposedly the only victims on the island.

Archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls says the UK government has been trying to hide information for decades. Apparently also because compatriots were not entirely uninvolved: British residents of the Channel Islands of Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney are said to have worked with the Nazis.

The journalist also revealed that the German commander of Alderney, Carl Hoffmann, was not handed over to the Soviets after the war, despite his crimes, as claimed by the British. Instead, he was imprisoned in Britain until 1948, when he was allowed to return to Germany, where he lived until his death in the 1970s. Hoffmann’s deputy, Kurt Klebeck, was also never charged and instead stayed in Germany unmolested.

“People just looked the other way for far too long,” says historian Marcus Roberts in the “Observer” and hopes that the announced investigation “will finally bring answers and justice for the victims.”