Page 12 - TORCH Magazine - Issue #19

Unlike the other islands in the occupied archipelago, such as Jersey and Guernsey where islanders had remained, there were no British witnesses eyeing the crimes taking place on Alderney. With no prying eyes of a civilian population monitoring activities, the Germans were left to do what they pleased for five years, with no concern for the brutal environment they were creating.
With the Germans destroying evidence of the camp before the island was liberated by British forces in 1945, and with reluctance from Westminster to fully reveal what had taken place on British soil, Alderney has been nicknamed, “the island of silence.”
But after eight decades of silence, recent archaeological discoveries, the release of undisclosed files and a renewed desire from campaigners is gradually revealing what really happened on Alderney.
Classified papers from Russia
The scale of the operation on Alderney has always been played down, but an investigative report by former top British army officers in 2017 claims the number of deaths was around 40,000-70,000, including many Jews.
One of the most significant reports
on record was compiled by intelligence officer Captain Theodore Pantcheff for
the British government, after Alderney was liberated. “Report on Atrocities Committed in Alderney, 1942-1945” was supposed to be locked away in British archives until 2045, but a copy was given to Moscow at the time due to the connection with so many Soviet victims.
It is only in recent years that researchers have discovered the document in the Russian State Archives. The paper makes solemn reading, but it casts light on one
of the darkest events ever to take place on British territory.
In the classified report, Colonel Pantcheff recorded his own observations, spoke to German guards and prisoners, and obtained the testimonies of 3,000 witnesses. He describes the mass graves
of the hundreds who were starved, beaten,
tortured, or shot to death by the Nazis in what they called Vernichtung durch Arbeit- which translates as 'extermination by labour', issued by Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS.
One witness told Pantcheff that 300 to 400 Jews were buried in mass graves on Longis Common on Alderney.
It described how SS soldiers who were guarding the prisoners were rewarded with extra leave for “every five dead prisoners,” and shot prisoners for the smallest of offenses.
He wrote that a “common cause” of death in 1943 was starvation “assisted by physical ill-treatment and overwork.”
Pantcheff learned from prisoners that many inmates were killed as ‘sport’, using dogs to force prisoners through security fences only to be shot by SS guards. The SS documented many such executions as ‘suicides’. One witness told him the walls of Norderney commander Karl Theiss’s office were repainted “three or four times to remove blood stains.”
The gateposts were also a favoured place for the SS to perpetrate and display brutality. A former Norderney prisoner
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