Page 10 - TORCH Magazine - Issue #19

The Island of Silence
Uncovering the Nazi concentration camp on British soil
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The stunningly beautiful island
of Alderney is a British Crown dependency and the closest of the Channel Islands to the UK (60
miles). With an area of just 3 square miles, sleepy Alderney boasts idyllic sandy beaches and rugged cliffs, with playful puffins and hardly any tourists! But in 1941, this remote corner of the British Isles, blessed with sunshine and the gentle splendour of creation, was cast into the evil shadow of Nazi Germany and became the location of the only concentration camp on British soil.
Described as ‘the last stepping stone before the conquest of mainland Britain’, almost the entire population of Alderney (about 1,500 people) gathered en masse at the quay at Braye Harbour on 23 June 1940 after being given just a few hours’ notice. They were evacuated hurriedly
by six Royal Navy ships at the request of Alderney’s government, following France’s surrender to Germany.
On an isle that has held allegiance
to the crown since 1066, families who had loved and cared for their tranquil island with pride for generations were uprooted and relocated to safety in Glasgow and other cities of northern Britain. Eileen Sykes was a teenager when she was told she had to leave her home. "It was very much a rush, I was called early on the morning and we could only take what we could carry.”
Shortly after the islanders left, 3,000 German soldiers – double the original population – invaded the vacated island setting up four slave labour camps
with several subsidiary camps. This tiny, isolated patch of grassland in the English Channel soon became a feared and heavily guarded Nazi prison camp. Upon