Channel Island Nazi graves found
New evidence doubles death toll to 700, expert claims
FOR decades, the true scale of Nazi atrocities on the Channel Islands has divided expert opinion.
Estimates vary of how many died in Hitler’s camps on Alderney, with some critics accusing researchers of sensationalism.
But there now appears to be proof that the number killed in the nearest outpost of the Third Reich to Britain is far higher than official figures stated.
A forensic archaeologist claims to have found unmarked mass graves, giving evidence of Nazi war crimes on British soil and doubling the death toll to at least 700.
Professor Caroline Sturdy Colls has located sites on the island, just eight miles from France, where hundreds of missing slave and forced labourers are feared to have been buried. The official toll of slave labourers who died on Alderney from 1940 to 1945 stands at 389, based on exhumations in the Sixties for the German War Graves Commission.
But Professor Sturdy Colls, an expert on conflict archaeology and genocide investigation at Staffordshire University, believes her new
figure of at least 700 is still a conservative estimate of those who perished.
The Holocaust expert says local officials tried to thwart her attempts to uncover what happened in the war, forbidding her from carrying out excavations. She used drones and ground-penetrating radar – as well as studying hundreds of aerial photographs – to uncover what she says is ‘possibly the biggest murder case on British soil’ in modern times. Much of her research has focused on what remains of Sylt, a notorious camp run by the SS, and an area called Longy Common, where victims of the Nazis were buried in marked graves.
Many of those murdered at Sylt died in appalling circumstances – beaten to death, shot or starved.
Professor Sturdy Colls, whose findings will be revealed in the TV documentary Adolf Island on Tuesday, said: ‘For the first time in 70 years it has been possible to prove that there are unmarked mass graves and individual burial sites on Alderney that have never been documented. This shows new evidence of Nazi crimes.’ During the Second World War, Alderney was the most heavily fortified Channel Island.
The Nazis brought in 6,000 slave labourers from Germany and housed them at four camps – Borkum, Helgoland, Norderney and Sylt – to carry out Hitler’s pet project to build an impregnable fortress on British soil.
Many of them were immigrants, political prisoners and men deemed unfit to be soldiers.
Professor Sturdy Colls said: ‘My research suggests more than 350 people are unaccounted for. Sixty five might well have been buried
‘We have a moral responsibility’
in unmarked graves discovered in the Sixties, but that leaves at least around 285 bodies unaccounted for and brings the total death toll on Alderney to more than 700.
‘My research has also demonstrated how Sylt connected to the Nazi concentration camp system in Europe. It was certainly part of it.
‘People in the local government and community have blocked the work we have done. They don’t want this story to be told.
‘Morally, we have a responsibility to address this issue. We have evidence about something terrible that happened on British soil – now we have to find out if these non-invasive findings are correct.’
Adolf Island will be screened on the Smithsonian Channel at 9pm on Tuesday.