Holocaust Death
Toll on English Channel Island Is Raised by Hundreds
A panel of academics said it found more
conclusive evidence of how many people were killed during the Nazi occupation
of Alderney, one of the Channel Islands in British territory.
A panel of historians examining the Nazi
occupation of the island of Alderney during World War II settled on a range of
deaths that surpassed a previous estimate. It also documented the lack of
prosecution after the war.
By Claire Moses
May 22, 2024
A long-running debate about a small part
of Britain's Holocaust history has been settled.
A panel of historians tasked with
investigating the death toll in Alderney, a British Crown Dependency and one of
the Channel Islands in the English Channel, has adjusted the island's
historical record, adding several hundred people to an official count from the
1940s.
Lord Eric Pickles, Britain's special
envoy for post-Holocaust issues, announced last July that a panel of experts
would try to settle the — at times heated — debate. On Wednesday, he presented
the findings with members of the panel in a packed room at the Imperial War
Museum in London.
The panel did not come to an exact
number. It concluded that the likely range of deaths was between 641 and 1,027,
with a maximum number of 1,134 people. A previous estimate had put the number
of deaths below 400.
The panel also answered the question of
how many forced laborers and prisoners — the vast majority of whom were men —
were on the island during the occupation between 1940 and 1945, concluding that
there were between 7,608 and 7,812 people. Most of them were forced laborers
from the Soviet Union. That number also included 594 Jewish prisoners from
France.
"We
are absolutely confident about these numbers," Mr. Pickles said. "The
truth can never harm us.
Although the panel's original remit had been to
focus solely on the numbers, that turned out not to be enough, Mr. Pickles
said. Over the last nine months, the panel widened its scope and investigated
the question of why Britain never held any of the Nazi perpetrators responsible
for mistreatment that included beatings, shootings, malnutrition and horrific
working conditions... Read full article here
