PRESS RELEASE : Launch of Alderney Occupied website [August 2023]
The press release issued by the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation on 7 August 2023.
Launch of website to accompany the review of evidence into the number of prisoners who died on the Channel Island of Alderney during the Nazi occupation.
Today (7 August 2023), the United Kingdom’s Post Holocaust Issues Envoy and Head of UK Delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Lord Eric Pickles announced the launch of a website detailing the Nazi occupation of Alderney.
The website www.occupiedalderney.org is an accompanying part of the review, launched on 27 July, of evidence into the number of prisoners who died on the Channel Island of Alderney during the Nazi occupation.
The website will showcase the latest cutting-edge research and will in due course highlight key documents relating to the Nazi occupation of Alderney which are residing in archives.
The website will also be the place where the latest research and evidence can be found on the number of people, including Jews, Spanish, Ukrainians and Russian prisoners of war, who died through the Nazi policy ‘extermination through labour’ (Vernichtung durch Arbeit) in the construction of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall.
The launch of this website reiterates our commitment to transparency. It contains information on prisoner biographies and the latest research on the camps, their regimes, and their histories. We encourage those with additional archival material and estimates of the numbers of dead to contact us at ukhmfsecretariat@levellingup.gov.uk
The website is supported by the University of Cambridge, Staffordshire University, and the UK government.
Lord Pickles said:
The website is part of our commitment to transparency. It gives a good overview of the latest published evidence and provides a further opportunity for people who have evidence to contact us. It is a work in progress with new entries planned. The website also offers an opportunity to read the latest research and documents related to the occupation of Alderney.
I thank Professor Caroline Sturdy-Colls and Kevin Colls from Staffordshire University for sharing their latest research on the Nazi occupation of Alderney and getting the website off to such a strong start. I also thank Dr Gilly Carr from the University of Cambridge for seeing through the project from IHRA recommendation to the development of the website.
Professor Caroline Sturdy-Colls and Kevin Colls MSc, Staffordshire University said:
We hope that this website will provide an important resource for anyone interested in the history of the Nazi Occupation of Alderney and the places that were connected to the forced and slave labour programme. Most importantly, we hope that the website will help to increase awareness of the stories of some of the people who lived, worked, and died there between 1941 and 1945.
Dr Gilly Carr, University of Cambridge said:
It gives me a great deal of pleasure to see one of IHRA’s recommendations for Alderney, made in 2019, come to fruition. It is enormously important that local people and visitors to Alderney, as well as researchers further afield, have reliable and peer-reviewed sources of information about the island’s German occupation heritage.
Nearly all information about these sites is either scattered in archives across Europe or is under the soil, accessible only through archaeology. This website brings all these things together and provides cutting edge research to all. It also provides lesson plans for schools. I am sure it will prove to be a valuable resource.
