Talk:Lager Sylt

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The article on Sylt is only partly correct.

It was built in July-October 1942 at La Foulère on the island of Alderney to hold (slave) labourers brought to the island by the Nazi Organisation Todt (OT) to work on the construction of fortifications, air-raid shelters and gun emplacements. Initially the camp held about 800 Slavic, French and Spanish prisoners.

In March. 1943 these prisoners were transferred to Nordeney camp to make way for some 1,000 prisoners transferred from the Sachsenhausen concentration camp south of Berlin. In that month, administration of the camp was transferred from Organisation Todt to the SS Totenkopfverbank under the command of Hauptsturmführer Maxmilian List.

Under his direction, those OT prisoners who were Jews were transferred from the other camps on Alderney (Helgoland and Nordeney) to Sylt, until the vast majority of prisoners held there were Jews - though non-Jewish prisoners were also sent there from time to time for punishment.

In June/July 1943 some 600+ French Jewish prisoners were brought from Cherbourg to Alderney and initially they were all crammed into Sylt which became impossibly over-crowded. As a result a section of Nordeney camp was partitioned off with barbed wire fencing and this section to was used for Jewish prisoners who could not be held at Sylt.

That section of Nordeney was transferred to the control of the SS in July, 1943 and in November of that year the entire camp was transferred to the SS.

The regime endured by inmates of Sylt was extreme. Their supervision by SS guards at worksites was so brutal that many died at work. On occasion bodies were left where they had fallen all day before being thrown off the cliffs near the camp or dumped off the breakwater.

It is impossible to know with accuracy how many died in the camp though eye-witness estimates are that several hundred lives were lost during the period of Lists’ administration. I know that the guards made inmates ‘dance’ by shooting at their feet and threw bodies over the cliffs on a regular basis.

During the winter of 1943-44 the number who died was high – several hundred according to my father – in part because of the starvation diet fed the prisoners and in equal measure because of the brutality of the guards.

The last of the prisoners was moved out of Sylt to Nordeney in June 1944 and the camp remained unoccupied until burned to the ground in May, 1945 together with all records pertaining to its use and the fate of its prisoners.

The article concludes by noting that ...‘The States (Alderney's governing body) declined to commemorate the sites of the four labour camps. Local historian Colin Partridge feels this may be due to the locals' desire to dissociate themselves from the accusations of collaboration.’

This is absolute rubbish! The ‘locals’ referred to by Partridge had all fled the island 2 weeks before the German occupation and spent the war in the relative safety of England, so none of them could have been accused or associated with ‘collaboration’. The few that remained on the island with one or two exceptions (eg. me) are long since dead and with them had dies their knowledge.

On the contrary, refusal of the current population to recognise island history during the period 1940 – 1945 is due to three factors (1) a large part of the present population are not and do not represent islander families or have historical any first hand knowledge of what went on in that period and could have had no involvement in it and (3) it is probably not a thing which would attract tourism or promote business. Why then should they commemorate anything so gruesome as the victims or sites of the horrific events which occurred?

No reason at all. But it still leaves me dismayed. Not even a discrete plaque and certainly not at the expense of the States. But what can one expect of people who have abandoned their culture, traditions, and language in favour of Anglicisation.

The States can only ignore the hundred of deaths which occurred on the island by refusing to recognise that they happened. Personally, I do not subscribe to the theory that 'ignorance is bliss' and believe that the States of Alderney have for some 60 years shown a meanness which goes well beyond parsimony.

Most of the locals had fled. I believe several remained.

"what can one expect of people who have abandoned their culture, traditions, and language in favour of Anglicisation."

Couldn't agree more. The same is happening in Sark, which far from being some feudal paradise is more like some police state. People were highly uncomfortable talking about the indigenous language, or mocked it. And that's just the language. The Dame's involvement with the German authorities is a matter of continuing controversy. But this is tangential to Alderney. The local attitude to their WWII history is sometimes callous - for example, Fort Tourgis, built with slave labour is to be turned into flats for English tax dodgers!

If you can supply references for the material above, please add it to the article. --MacRusgail 18:15, 30 August 2006 (UTC)