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Tag: UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation

  • PRESS RELEASE : Launch of Alderney Occupied website [August 2023]

    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.

  • PRESS RELEASE : Review into the number of prisoners who died on Alderney during the Nazi occupation [July 2023]

    PRESS RELEASE : Review into the number of prisoners who died on Alderney during the Nazi occupation [July 2023]

    The press release issued by the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation on 27 July 2023.

    Lord Pickles announces a review of evidence into the number of prisoners who died on the Channel Island of Alderney during the Nazi occupation.

    Today (27 July 2023), the United Kingdom’s Post Holocaust Issues Envoy and Head of UK Delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Lord Eric Pickles announced a review of evidence into the number of prisoners who died on the Channel Island of Alderney during the Nazi occupation.

    The camps in Alderney were significant in the history of the Holocaust not just because they were sited on British soil, but because they provide evidence of ‘extermination through labour’ (Vernichtung durch Arbeit) in the construction of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall.

    There has been considerable speculation in recent years over numbers of individuals murdered by the conditions in the camps.

    Lord Pickles said:

    Numbers matter because the truth matters. The dead deserve the dignity of the truth; the residents of Alderney deserve accurate numbers to free them from the distortion of conspiracy theorists. Exaggerating the numbers of the dead, or even minimising them, is in itself a form of Holocaust distortion and a critical threat to Holocaust memory and to fostering a world without genocide.

    The review will give historians, journalists, residents, and anyone with a theory an opportunity to explore their thoughts with eleven of the world’s leading experts, in an atmosphere that combines openness with academic rigour. All are welcome.

    I hope this review will put to rest conspiracy theories on numbers and provide lasting dignity to the dead and some peace to the residents of Alderney who continue to remember them at the Hammond War Memorial every year in May.

    Lord Pickles has now appointed a team of eleven independent, experienced, and internationally recognised experts to build on pre-existing knowledge and come together to examine files from archives across Europe to identify what they consider to be the most accurate number of people who died under the occupation.

    We are also pleased to be receiving expert assistance from the Archives at Yad Vashem, the world’s preeminent Holocaust Centre, in order to locate relevant documentation related to Alderney.

    The expert group will announce their findings in a report to be published in March 2024.

    They are:

    • Project chair: Dr Paul Sanders (NEOMA Business School, Reims, France)
    • Professor Marc Buggeln (Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany)
    • Dr Gilly Carr (University of Cambridge, UK)
    • Dr Daria Cherkaska (Staffordshire University, UK)
    • Mr Kevin Colls, MSc (Staffordshire University, UK)
    • Dr Karola Fings (Heidelberg University, Germany)
    • Professor Fabian Lemmes (Universität des Saarlandes, Germany)
    • Benoit Luc, MA (Directeur du Service Départemental de l’Office National des Combattants et Victimes de Guerre de Loire-Atlantique, France)
    • Jurat Colin Partridge OBE (Alderney)
    • Professor Caroline Sturdy Colls (Staffordshire University, UK)
    • Professor Robert Jan Van Pelt (University of Waterloo, Canada)

    The terms of reference for the expert group are:

    1. To review knowledge and records to identify the number of prisoners who died in Alderney during the Nazi occupation.

    2. To review knowledge and records to identify the number of prisoners / forced / slave labourers (of all categories / nationalities / places of origin) who passed through Alderney.

    3. To evaluate submissions from the public, noting that the evidence obtained may be relevant to points (1) and (2) above and may be included feeds in the final report.

    4. To produce a report on the findings of the enquiry.

    As this is an open and transparent exercise we would like to invite members of the public to take part in this review of evidence.

    If anybody wishes to submit their own evidence, files, or calculations of the number of the dead or of the number of forced and slave labourers / prisoners who passed through Alderney, they should do so using the instructions provided below. Submissions will be reviewed by the expert panel as part of their research.