Page 13 - TORCH Magazine - Issue #19

explained, “At Lager Sylt we saw a Russian, he was just hanging, strung up from the main gate.”
“On his chest he had a sign on which was written: 'for stealing bread'. Others were left hanging for days and whipped or had cold water poured over them all night until they died.”
Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British Forces in Afghanistan, has also conducted independent research piecing together
the conclusion that the severity of what took place was even greater than initially recorded in Pantcheff’s report. Writing about events on the island, he says, “They died not in hundreds but in their thousands and tens of thousands on Alderney. And when they dropped, they were replaced by others – who in turn were also worked to death and then replaced.”
With an average life expectancy of three months, turnover was rapid, says Kemp.
Further witnesses
Chilling details from witness statements of survivors, mainly Russians, that have emerged since the Pantcheff report
was published, show how horrendous conditions really were.
“Two prisoners collapsed where they stood,” says one, “and to my horror they were thrown into the sea. Later that day, seven more went the same way. Throwing men over the cliff became the standard way of getting rid of exhausted workers.”
On another occasion, the survivor said he saw 50 slave workers shot and thrown into the sea with stones tied to their feet.
Former Sylt survivor Wilhelm Wernegau testifies how the camp's cook was strangled by the SS because they did not like his food.
“Another man was crucified for stealing, hung by his hands. When I got up in the mornings I saw dead bodies in the bunks around me.”
“There was a special hut where the corpses were piled. Later they were taken away, loaded onto trucks and dumped in the sea.”
He also says that a special squad was
deployed to fatally inject prisoners who were no longer strong enough to work.
Another survivor recalled 500 men dying there during his time alone. They were replaced from concentration camps in Germany such as Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Neuengamme.
Kemp says that knowing the precise number of victims will never be possible, but it is vastly bigger than has ever been suggested before.
“A minimum 40,000 slave labourers died from exhaustion, sickness, injury and brutality and perhaps as many as 70,000.”
“All this makes Alderney the scene of a massive war crime, its own mini-Holocaust, no less, which needs to be respected” says Colonel Kemp. “It is time this was finally recognised. The island is a mass grave, which needs to be respected.”
To this day, what the British government knows about what lies beneath the ground of Alderney hasn’t been made public, with criticism levelled against British authorities for pulling veils over the truth. Some
argue Britain classed the 1945 report as confidential because few wished to dwell on the issue of mass killings and burials on the island. Others believe the British may have wanted to divert criticism from why the island wasn’t initially defended.
Earlier this year, Conservative MP Matthew Offord called on the UK government to release the undisclosed files about the mass graves.
He said, “We have a duty to ensure
that no-one is left behind and I ask the Government to play its part and do the right thing by releasing all information and documents in its possession.”
New archaeology research
What remained after the German cover up was quickly overtaken by Alderney’s billowing long grass and abundant flora, fading the camps into the windswept landscape. But in recent years archaeologists have carried out extensive projects on Alderney, uncovering several remaining structures that were part of the Sylt camp.
Caroline Sturdy Colls, who is professor
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