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The government’s investigation into Nazi wartime atrocities of Channel Island of Alderney was extended to investigate why none of the Nazi perpetrators responsible for the crimes had been brought to justice in Britain, Observer can reveal.
Originally set up to review the death toll in the island’s camps, the inquiry will publish a report later this month revealing the full extent of the “unspeakable and unimaginable brutality and sadism” which happened on British soil.
New evidence seen by the inquiry, which began last July, includes historic documents from the UN War Crimes Commission which described the Alderney atrocities as “systematic terrorism” involving “murder and slaughter” and “torture of civilians”.
In 1981 it was published in this newspaper by author Solomon Stekol that the senior Nazi officers responsible for the mass atrocities at Alderney were living freely in Germany.
The inquiry is looking into whether there was a government cover-up at the time to ensure the full scale of the horrors was hidden from the British public.
A panel of more than a dozen experts drawn from across the UK holocaust envoy, Lord Pickles, would conclude that at least 1,000 prisoners had been killed in the Nazi camps on the island, but would accept that it was impossible to arrive at an exact figure, as the corpses of the victims were often thrown into the sea and many other sick slave laborers died after being transported to extermination camps on the continent after being worked to exhaustion.
Most of the victims were slave laborers from Russia brought to the island to build Adolf Hitler’s so-called concrete safety net of the Atlantic Wall, but other victims were from 20 countries, including France, Spain, Germany and Poland.
The inquiry will reveal details of the hundreds of Jews rounded up by the Nazis and transported to Alderney, many of them French. While many survived, they were subjected to horrific treatment in the camp, including starvation, punitive beatings, and summary executions. Although there was no extermination camp at Alderney, one concentration camp was run by the infamous Main Death Unit of the SS, responsible for administering Final decision.
After an Observer report in July last year, Pickles invited Prof Anthony Glees, an expert on security and intelligence, to investigate why there are no trials of those guilty of war crimes on the death of Alderney.
A post-war British military inquiry held at Alderney into the atrocities provided an extensive list of Alderney war criminals along with evidence of their crimes. These criminals included the commandant of the island, Major Karl Hoffmann, who was in British custody. But in July 1945 the British government decided not to prosecute.
Professor Glees, who was an adviser to Margaret Thatcher’s Nazi war crimes inquiry in the 1980s, is carrying out a full review of historical government documents to find out why the British state did not prosecute war criminals identified by military intelligence.
At the time, the Moscow Declaration, signed by Winston Churchill, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, made it clear that those responsible for Nazi atrocities should be tried in the country where the crimes were committed, but this international agreement appears to have been ignored. , when it came to Alderney.
Glees said: “What is really shocking and needs to be highlighted is that, numbers aside, it is absolutely true that the Nazis brought their destructive mindset to Alderney and were involved in the most unspeakable and unimaginable brutality and sadism on the island , resulting in many deaths. Lord Pickles asked me to find out why those responsible were not brought to justice.
The issue is particularly sensitive as the UK has taken over the Presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) this year. The full extent of the atrocities during the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands will also have to be addressed in Holocaust Memorial and Education Center planned for Victoria Tower Gardens in Westminster.
Pickles explained to Observer why he expanded the scope of the Alderney inquiry: “This is important not only because these events took place on British soil, but also because the barbarism and inhumanity were felt in full force here. From the beginning, the big question was why there were no war crimes trials for the atrocities committed there.
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As part of the investigation’s review, international war crimes expert Prof Dan Plesh also provided evidence that the British government had missed further opportunities to bring those responsible to justice. After the war, both Czech and French authorities were keen to prosecute war crimes at Alderney.
The Plesch file with evidence from United Nations War Crimes Commissionwhich operated from 1943-48, included a document describing the Alderney atrocities as “systematic terrorism”, including “murder and slaughter” and “torture of civilians”.
A document from the British war crimes branch reveals an indictment against 25 alleged war criminals at Alderney and includes testimony from Czech prisoner Robert Prokop, who describes how the prisoners were administered lethal injections.
Prokop said: “All the accused are responsible for and participated in the atrocities committed against the prisoners. The prisoners were brutally beaten and inhumanely mistreated. Many of them were killed. Sick prisoners are killed by injections.
Plesch said: “Nazi crimes at Alderney, including extermination and random shootings, were indicted by an international legal body in 1940 led by Britain. The accused was to be tried in a British court for crimes committed on British soil under the British War Crimes Act.
Dr Jilly Carr of Cambridge University, who is co-ordinating the panel of experts, said: “It is important to look at the number of victims and the whole working population at Alderney because it has become the subject of increasing – and increasingly wild – speculation in the past years. For the sake of the victims and all those who survived the conditions on the island, it was vital that we assembled a dedicated team of experts to scrutinize all available information from across Europe and beyond.
Marcus Roberts, a Jewish historian who was full disclosure campaign of the scale of the horrors at Alderney, said: “I hope the review will deliver a fully frank report that will finally end the UK cover-up of German war crimes in Alderney and give real closure to the communities affected after 80 years.”
The investigation will announce its results by the end of the month. The exact date and location of the inquiry is being kept secret for security reasons given the sensitivity of the subject.
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