Guernsey Holocaust 'impact' curriculum being created

Five of the six people identified as Jews by the German authorities were deported with three dying in the gas chambers and two surviving the internment camps

The impact of the Holocaust will be taught in schools in the only part of the British Isles from which Jews were deported and later died in Auschwitz.

Marianne Grunfeld, Auguste Spitz and Therese Steiner were deported from Guernsey, which was occupied by German forces, to France in April 1942.

They were among Jews picked up by the Nazis and sent to the concentration camp in July the same year.

Guernsey's government is working on a curriculum to start in September 2017.

More on the Holocaust 'impact' being added to the curriculum, and other news

The Committee for Education Sport and Culture confirmed it was working with Cambridge University academic Dr Gilly Carr and the Holocaust Educational Trust on the course material.

It is understood it will focus on how the Bailiwick of Guernsey was affected by the Holocaust.

Dr Carr said: "It is part of the occupation history that isn't told much and for the most part wasn't passed down through the generations by those involved."

Anti-Semitic laws were introduced in the islands, including Guernsey, forcing Jewish people to wear the yellow Star of David on their clothes

Dr Carr said she would be working on course material focusing on a mixture of people from Jersey and Guernsey including more well known faces.

She said she would also be looking at people who did not survive the camps.

The Channel Islands were occupied by the German forces during World War Two, with the civilian governments left in place but with oversight from the occupying authorities.

Jews were not the only island residents to be deported. Others were sent to Nazi prisons, concentration camps and internment camps, with eight Guernsey residents known to have died on the continent.

Hundreds of slave labourers, including Jews and Russian prisoners of war, are known to have died in Alderney's camps.