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Alderney Island is off the coast of France, but belongs to the United Kingdom. It covers an area of approximately 8 square kilometers and has a population of approximately 2,000.
During World War II, the Nazis occupied the island and established a concentration camp here. The Germans exterminated almost all traces of the camp as they left the island, and little is known about it for a long time, but now new scientific research reveals the horrors experienced by prisoners incarcerated here, writes the Smithsonian magazine.
Wikimedia Commons / Public domain image / Allerney Island on the English Channel, the exact location of the island is indicated by an arrow
Consecutive archaeological research on this island has been carried out for the first time in over 70 years. They reveal how the camp changed over time and how the Nazis treated prisoners there.
Residents were evacuated
1940 In June, after France surrendered to Germany, the Germans occupied not only most of France, but also Alderney and other British-owned Channel Islands, which were closer to the coasts of France than England.
Before the island was occupied by the Germans, the UK government evacuated the entire population of the island (there were around 1,500 at the time) to Britain. Then the Germans found the islands empty.
1942 The Germans established several labor camps for prisoners of war on the island of Alderney. Many of the prisoners on the island were Europeans from eastern Ukraine, Poland, Russia, and other areas occupied by Germans from Eastern Europe.
Information on whether the Lithuanians were imprisoned on the island could not be found, but it is also possible. Several French Jews are also imprisoned on the island.
The prisoners worked mainly to install air raid shelters, various fortifications, etc. Such fortifications were installed on islands along the entire French coast in preparation for a possible English attack.
Photo from Wikipedia Commons / Inmates of the concentration camp in Alderny
The labor camp becomes a concentration camp.
1943 In March, the Sylto labor camp, where living and working conditions were the strictest of all the camps established on the island, became a concentration camp. The SS became directly responsible for its supervision.
This meant that no more prisoners were brought to the camp, but political prisoners and other “enemies” of the state, according to the Nazis. Until then, there were a few hundred prisoners in the camp, but now there were more than a thousand here.
The concentration camp has been operating here for over a year. 1944 In the mid-19th century, the Sylto concentration camp and other labor camps operating on the island were closed and prisoners were transferred to camps on French territory. O 1945 In May, when it became clear that the Germans would lose the war, the German government that ruled Aldern surrendered to the Allies.
But even before the British physically liberated the island, Sylto’s concentration camp was demolished to its foundations by order of the island’s commander, and all documents were simply burned.
Photo by Vida Press / Ruins of the former Sylto concentration camp, photographed in 1945.
Local government and returning residents, according to scientists studying the island’s history, also did not want to emphasize the island’s painful history and did not mind preserving memory. Since their island was not there when the atrocities occurred, they simply wanted to erase the existence of the concentration camp from history.
“Physical evidence of the atrocities that took place in Sylte was buried. “Literally and figuratively,” archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls of Staffordshire told National Geographic.
On the other hand, many locals simply did not know the details of the painful story. Civilians were only allowed to return to Alderney in 1945. in December. At that time, only the ruins of the labor camps remained, and neither the prisoners nor the caretakers were here for long.
Admittedly, there was also indisputable evidence of the atrocities that took place here, such as the prison cemetery with several hundred graves. However, until recent years, very little was known about what was happening in Alderney.
Photo by Vida Press / Only a few pillars of the old gates of the concentration camp remain.
New research, published this week in the British archaeological journal Antiquity, combines existing historical knowledge, such as testimonies from former prisoners, with modern archaeological techniques, such as ground penetrating radars that let you know what is hidden underground without dig in space.
All of this helped the researchers recreate a three-dimensional model of the former concentration camp.
I was afraid of stealing bread
What the investigators found confirms the testimonies of prisoners beaten, beaten, or simply shot by dogs.
Historians have found several testimonies of a man who has been imprisoned on the island of Alderney. For example, Francisco Font, a Spaniard imprisoned in one of the other labor camps in Alderny, said that one day he saw a man hanged at the gate of the camp while working near the Sylto concentration camp.
A sign was written on his chest with the words “to steal bread.” According to F.Font, the hanged man remained for four days.
Studies of the remains of the houses in the Sylto concentration camp showed that a prisoner only needed around 1.5 square meters of space.
Photo by Vida Press / Now there is a meadow in the territory of the former concentration camp.
In addition, an underground tunnel was discovered that led from the camp commander’s residence to the barracks where the prisoners lived. The researchers couldn’t determine exactly what this tunnel was used for, but found that it was used extensively.
The researchers put forward the theory that perhaps the women incarcerated in the camp through this tunnel were taken to a brothel set up in the commander’s house, where they were sexually exploited.
Nazi official documents say that 103 prisoners died in the Sylt camp. However, research shows that there had to have been more than 700 deaths in all the camps in Alderney.
There are few signs of the old German occupation on the island today. Only in 2008 At the request of the former prisoners, a commemorative plaque was erected near the main gate of the Sylto concentration camp.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons / Commemorative plaque on Alderney Island
2017 Island authorities have banned the development of the former camp for private purposes, but the question of whether the former concentration camp at this site will be perpetuated and how it will continue is still unanswered.
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