Holocaust centre to help collate Alderney WW2 deaths

Alderney housed four slave labour sites and a concentration camp

Assistance from the world's "pre-eminent Holocaust centre" is to help determine exactly how many prisoners died in Alderney during World War Two, leaders into the review say.

The only Nazi concentration camp on British soil was based on the island.

Project lead Lord Eric Pickles, said archives at Israel's Yad Vashem centre would be used to help get "the most accurate number of people who died".

The official number of deaths is 389, but it could be much higher.

'Truth matters'

Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, is based at the Holocaust memorial site in Jerusalem.

Lord Pickles, the UK's Holocaust Envoy, said his team looking into the deaths would be "receiving expert assistance" from its archives "in order to locate relevant documentation related to Alderney".

The island housed four forced/slave labour sites, including the concentration camp Lager Sylt.

Although the official figure of death is nearly 400, some historians have claimed the true figure could run into the thousands, or even tens of thousands.

The UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation said 11 experts from the UK, Germany, Canada and Alderney will examine files from archives from across Europe and evaluate submissions from the public to determine the true figure.

They will announce their findings in a report to be published in March 2024.

Lord Pickles said inaccurate claims were a "critical threat to Holocaust memory" and "numbers matter because the truth matters", he said.

Members of the public are invited to lodge submissions to the review by 1 November.

Alderney Occupation

Alderney was almost completely evacuated before the occupation in 1940

• Demilitarised in 1940, along with other Channel Islands

• Occupied by German forces in June 1940

• The most heavily fortified Channel Island as part of Hitler's Atlantic Wall

• Nearly all of Alderney's population was evacuated to England

• Four labour camps were established - named after the German islands Borkum, Helgoland, Norderney and Sylt

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