Lager Helgoland

Coordinates: 49°43′6″N 2°12′48″W / 49.71833°N 2.21333°W Lager Helgoland was a Nazi concentration camp on Alderney in the Channel Islands, named after the Frisian Island of Heligoland (in German, Helgoland), formerly a Danish and then British possession located 46 kilometres (29 mi) off the German North Sea coastline and belonging to Germany since 1890.

The Germans built four concentration camps on Alderney, subcamps of the Neuengamme concentration camp (located in Hamburg, Germany). Each subcamp was named after one of the Frisian Islands: Lager Norderney located at Saye, Lager Borkum at Platte Saline, Lager Sylt near the old telegraph tower at La Foulère and Lager Helgoland, situated in the northwest corner of the island. 700 people died in the Alderney concentration camps (out of a total inmate population of about 6,000). These were the only Nazi concentration camps on British soil.

Little remains of Lager Helgoland now.

It was organised by the Schutzstaffel - SS-Baubrigade I—which was first under supervision of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp; and since mid-February 1943 ran under the Neuengamme camp in northern Germany.[1] It was used by the Nazi Organisation Todt, a forced labour programme, to build bunkers, gun emplacements, air-raid shelters, and concrete fortifications.

Lager Helgoland was situated in the northwest corner of Alderney. The Borkum and Helgoland camps were "volunteer" (Hilfswillige) labour camps[2] and the labourers in those camps were treated harshly but marginally better than the inmates at the Sylt and Norderney camps. The prisoners in Lager Sylt and Lager Norderney were slave labourers forced to build the many military fortifications and installations throughout Alderney. Sylt camp held Jewish enforced labourers and was a death camp.[3] Norderney camp housed European (usually Eastern but including Republican) and Russian enforced labourers. Lager Borkum was used for German technicians and volunteers from different countries of Europe. Lager Helgoland was filled with Russian Organisation Todt workers.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Staff (1967-02-23), Verzeichnis der Konzentrationslager und ihrer Außenkommandos gemäß § 42 Abs. 2 BEG (in German), Bundesministerium der Justiz, retrieved 2008-09-26, 6a Alderney, Einsatzort der I. SS-Baubrigade Sachsenhausen, ab Mitte Februar 1943 Neuengamme
  2. ↑ Christian Streit: Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die Sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen, 1941-1945, Bonn: Dietz (3. Aufl., 1. Aufl. 1978), ISBN 3-8012-5016-4 - "Between 22 June 1941 and the end of the war, roughly 5.7 million members of the Red Army fell into German hands. In January 1945, 930,000 were still in German camps. A million at most had been released, most of whom were so-called "volunteers" (Hilfswillige) for (often compulsory) auxiliary service in the Wehrmacht. Another 500,000, as estimated by the Army High Command, had either fled or been liberated. The remaining 3,300,000 (57.5 percent of the total) had perished."
  3. ↑ Subterranea Britannica (February 2003), SiteName: Lager Sylt Concentration Camp, retrieved 2009-06-06

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