Julia Pascal: Our hidden history
Sixty years after the deportation of Britons from the Channel Islands, the suffering is neither acknowledged nor compensated. In one of the most shameful episodes in British history, more than 2,000 British subjects were deported from the Channel Islands to Nazi-controlled France and Germany. Sixty years on they are still waiting for compensation, yet today all they hear is a deafening silence.
Sixty years after the deportation of Britons from the Channel Islands, the suffering is neither acknowledged nor compensated.
In one of the most shameful episodes in British history, more than 2,000 British subjects were deported from the Channel Islands to Nazi-controlled France and Germany. Sixty years on they are still waiting for compensation, yet today all they hear is a deafening silence.
In September 1942, under German orders, the Channel Islands government made deportation lists of British passport holders and foreign nationals, while native Channel Islanders remained safe. The deportation of foreign-born Jews had started in April 1942. Four months later it was the turn of the British. Their lives were uprooted and some died, yet after the liberation the subject was closed and any mention of compensation ignored.
The Channel Islands' war history was one of almost total collaboration with the Nazis. It has taken decades for the islands to admit their role in the Jewish deportations, which took place when Guernsey and Jersey absorbed Nazi Germany's anti-semitic laws into their own legal system. Today there is still shame about the issue, and the islands' governments are uneasy about revealing what happened during the second wave of deportations.
As a result, the occupation has been bleached out of British history. How many students know that the Channel Islands - British territory - were occupied? How many know that Jews were deported from Guernsey and Jersey to Auschwitz with full Channel Islands collaboration? And, if this Jewish story is just seeping out, what about the largely hidden history of these British deportees who were sent to prisoner-of-war camps?
If Jews and the British were deported, during different waves and for different reasons, questions might be asked about who remained safe. The rulers of the Channel Islands, known freemasons, were protected from deportation, whereas in other Nazi-occupied countries, masons were sent to concentration camps. Many on Guernsey believe that the Channel Islands government willingly served their Nazi masters, only protesting when freemasons' lives were threatened.
It looks as if a deal was struck. After the deportations, old Channel Islands governing families remained untouched. After the war they were to be rebranded as the heroes of the occupation. Victor G Carey, who collaborated with the Nazis as the bailiff of Guernsey, was knighted by the Queen for his war services. Many feel he should have been hanged.
Certainly there was no postwar acknowledgment of the suffering of the British deportees. They were arrested as a reprisal for German nationals taken by the British in Iran. The Nazis judged it useful to have British prisoners for possible hostage exchange. The deportees included pregnant women, mothers and babies. Officially exiled as prisoners of war, they were removed to concentration camps. The majority were sent to Biberach, Wurzach and Laufen. Conditions were grim. Some people died en route. Forty-five of the deportees later perished in Biberach.
When the first postwar settlements were organised in 1964, the Anglo-German compensation agreement excluded these British deportees. After German reunification, the British government ignored the issue of the Channel Islands deportations at the Moscow Treaty talks when other second world war claims were discussed. A final peace treaty still has to be signed between Germany and the Allies at which final reparations are negotiated.
Will the Channel Islands deportees be included? The prognosis is not good. Britain wants to sustain the myth that the Channel Islands were victims of the Nazis, rather than admitting that the bailiffs of Guernsey and Jersey collaborated. History has been ignored.
After the war, discontented locals started to question the non-party semi-feudal system of island government and records show Whitehall feared that, if the truth about the islands' war history became known, it might provoke a socialist or even communist rising. Consequently, in the postwar rush towards "normalisation", the islanders were described as "plucky resisters" and discussion of the complexity of collaboration was taboo. If, today, the former deportees begin to demand their rights too openly, it will reopen all these controversial issues.
Up to now, semantics has let the British government off the hook. Whitehall insists on describing the deportees as "internees". An internee does not get compensation; a deportee does. But this is pure revisionism. Frank Falla, a Biberach survivor, criticised the Channel Islands government for refusing to "discharge even the civic duty owed to those unfortunate English people as citizens of these islands". The deportees rightly feel aggrieved. They ask why 800 British civilians, interned by the Japanese in China, were compensated when they have received nothing. In Guernsey, no government official has ever taken up the deportees' case.
The British government, the Germans and the Channel Islands government hope that, by ignoring the problem, it will disappear. Files on the occupation are closed and many former deportees are fearful of raising their voices against a feudal government that still discriminates against UK passport-holders. Those who collaborated with the Nazis have families in the Channel Islands government, and the reputations of the guilty are being protected. The only British government file which can reveal the truth about the Channel Islands deportations should have been released to the Public Records Office. But it has been "retained by department" indefinitely.
It is time this story was open to the public view. British people have the right to know about their own wartime history, and the remaining deportees should be offered compensation as a symbol of regret for ruined lives.
· Julia Pascal's play about wartime Guernsey, Theresa, is part of her The Holocaust Trilogy (Oberon Books)
In one of the most shameful episodes in British history, more than 2,000 British subjects were deported from the Channel Islands to Nazi-controlled France and Germany. Sixty years on they are still waiting for compensation, yet today all they hear is a deafening silence.
In September 1942, under German orders, the Channel Islands government made deportation lists of British passport holders and foreign nationals, while native Channel Islanders remained safe. The deportation of foreign-born Jews had started in April 1942. Four months later it was the turn of the British. Their lives were uprooted and some died, yet after the liberation the subject was closed and any mention of compensation ignored.
The Channel Islands' war history was one of almost total collaboration with the Nazis. It has taken decades for the islands to admit their role in the Jewish deportations, which took place when Guernsey and Jersey absorbed Nazi Germany's anti-semitic laws into their own legal system. Today there is still shame about the issue, and the islands' governments are uneasy about revealing what happened during the second wave of deportations.
As a result, the occupation has been bleached out of British history. How many students know that the Channel Islands - British territory - were occupied? How many know that Jews were deported from Guernsey and Jersey to Auschwitz with full Channel Islands collaboration? And, if this Jewish story is just seeping out, what about the largely hidden history of these British deportees who were sent to prisoner-of-war camps?
If Jews and the British were deported, during different waves and for different reasons, questions might be asked about who remained safe. The rulers of the Channel Islands, known freemasons, were protected from deportation, whereas in other Nazi-occupied countries, masons were sent to concentration camps. Many on Guernsey believe that the Channel Islands government willingly served their Nazi masters, only protesting when freemasons' lives were threatened.
It looks as if a deal was struck. After the deportations, old Channel Islands governing families remained untouched. After the war they were to be rebranded as the heroes of the occupation. Victor G Carey, who collaborated with the Nazis as the bailiff of Guernsey, was knighted by the Queen for his war services. Many feel he should have been hanged.
Certainly there was no postwar acknowledgment of the suffering of the British deportees. They were arrested as a reprisal for German nationals taken by the British in Iran. The Nazis judged it useful to have British prisoners for possible hostage exchange. The deportees included pregnant women, mothers and babies. Officially exiled as prisoners of war, they were removed to concentration camps. The majority were sent to Biberach, Wurzach and Laufen. Conditions were grim. Some people died en route. Forty-five of the deportees later perished in Biberach.
When the first postwar settlements were organised in 1964, the Anglo-German compensation agreement excluded these British deportees. After German reunification, the British government ignored the issue of the Channel Islands deportations at the Moscow Treaty talks when other second world war claims were discussed. A final peace treaty still has to be signed between Germany and the Allies at which final reparations are negotiated.
Will the Channel Islands deportees be included? The prognosis is not good. Britain wants to sustain the myth that the Channel Islands were victims of the Nazis, rather than admitting that the bailiffs of Guernsey and Jersey collaborated. History has been ignored.
After the war, discontented locals started to question the non-party semi-feudal system of island government and records show Whitehall feared that, if the truth about the islands' war history became known, it might provoke a socialist or even communist rising. Consequently, in the postwar rush towards "normalisation", the islanders were described as "plucky resisters" and discussion of the complexity of collaboration was taboo. If, today, the former deportees begin to demand their rights too openly, it will reopen all these controversial issues.
Up to now, semantics has let the British government off the hook. Whitehall insists on describing the deportees as "internees". An internee does not get compensation; a deportee does. But this is pure revisionism. Frank Falla, a Biberach survivor, criticised the Channel Islands government for refusing to "discharge even the civic duty owed to those unfortunate English people as citizens of these islands". The deportees rightly feel aggrieved. They ask why 800 British civilians, interned by the Japanese in China, were compensated when they have received nothing. In Guernsey, no government official has ever taken up the deportees' case.
The British government, the Germans and the Channel Islands government hope that, by ignoring the problem, it will disappear. Files on the occupation are closed and many former deportees are fearful of raising their voices against a feudal government that still discriminates against UK passport-holders. Those who collaborated with the Nazis have families in the Channel Islands government, and the reputations of the guilty are being protected. The only British government file which can reveal the truth about the Channel Islands deportations should have been released to the Public Records Office. But it has been "retained by department" indefinitely.
It is time this story was open to the public view. British people have the right to know about their own wartime history, and the remaining deportees should be offered compensation as a symbol of regret for ruined lives.
· Julia Pascal's play about wartime Guernsey, Theresa, is part of her The Holocaust Trilogy (Oberon Books)
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