Deportations from the German-occupied Channel Islands
On direct instructions from Adolf Hitler, Nazi German forces deported and interned 2,300 Channel Islands civilian residents.
[2]: 10 The British Government had decided on 15 June to demilitarise and abandon the Channel Islands, so all military personnel, weapons and equipment had been taken to England.
Hitler was furious,[3] albeit hypocritical, to complain of an invasion of a neutral country and the internment of German men.
The German Foreign Office response was that British people in the Channel Islands were effectively interned as they could not leave without permission.
The German military (the Wehrmacht) was unhappy with the use of the Pripet Marshes, an operational area where they did not want Allied officials to visit.
The order arrived in Jersey on 15 September, the same day a meeting was held with the Bailiff and Parish officials, and a notice appeared in the local paper.
The crowds attending to wave goodbye were larger than before and their patriotic singing angered the Germans, who responded with violence and arrests.
[1]: 15 Rather than put the deportees in the ubiquitous "40 hommes et 8 chevaux" French boxcars, the Germans gave them second class train carriages to travel in.
[10] A British commando raid on Sark in October 1942, Operation Basalt, motivated another batch of deportations in February 1943, with people taken from all three Islands.
[13] Oflag V-B was located at Biberach an der Riß in countryside in southern Germany with a view of the Bavarian Alps.
The first two batches of people from Jersey arrived in what was formerly a Hitler Youth summer camp, but now consisted of 23 barrack huts surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers.
There were two hospital huts, storerooms, canteen, cookhouse, washing facilities and shower block, police and prison camp.
Guernsey nurse Gladys Skillett, who was five months pregnant at the time of her deportation to Biberach, became the first Channel Islander to give birth while in captivity in Germany.
It contained a hospital, theatre, storerooms, cellars and accommodation for men and women in different communal rooms housing up to 30 with bunk beds.
[5]: 90 Ilag VII in Laufen is located in Bavaria with views of the Alps on the border with Austria and was designated a camp for single men.
Receiving single men aged over 16 from Dorsten and Biberach, the camp senior was initially Frank Stroobant, who in April 1943 was taken by the Germans as a witness to the site of the Katyn massacre where the bodies of 22,000 Polish officers had been discovered, murdered by the Russians.
[9]: 74–82 Not receiving any Red Cross parcels before Christmas 1942, they were surprised when a nearby POW camp donated every person in Laufen with a tin of condensed milk and a packet of biscuits.
[9]: 92 John Lingshaw from Jersey decided to collaborate with the Germans and volunteered in August 1943 to go to Berlin and teach English to women working in the propaganda service.
A 93-page memorial book, titled The bird-cage: Ilag vii Laufen, Oberbayern - Germany was written in 1944 and published in 1945.
[9]: 82 A small number of Islanders spent time in other camps such as Liebenau on the Swiss border, Front Stalag 122 near Paris, Ilag XVIII Spittal.
Some cases of food, including, milk, fruit, jam, fish and soap, were received from the Red Cross in addition to individual parcels.
“Camp art,” such as engraving tin mugs, sewing, creating Christmas toys and making sandals out of platted string, were popular hobbies.
[1]: 79 Long (up to 10 miles) and short walks outside of the Wurzach camp took place, with up to 150 people, under guard, including the odd visit to a hostelry.
[5]: 32 At Biberach, people allowed outside on walks would trade Red Cross goods for rabbits, chickens, eggs, cigars and schnapps, as well as collecting free food from hedgerows.
A postcard system of communication to the UK (via the Red Cross) and the Channel Islands (via German “Feldpost” addressed to the “Kanal Inseln”) started in October 1942.
[20]: 87 Laufen produced printed Christmas postcards with a drawing of the exterior of the Schloss (1943) and the interior of the vaulted canteen (1944).
[1]: 120 Other indications included the regular flights of bombers overflying the camps and occasional new arrivals who had seen cities “rather flattened”.
[5]: 72 In Wurzach in August 1944, one man put up a map and indicated the progress of Allied armies with red wool, which was regularly inspected by the camp commander.
[5]: 114 Once the Red Cross parcels began to arrive in bulk, 2,000-6,000 at Wurzach at a time,[5]: 49 those in camps were probably better fed than most people left in the occupied Islands.
The next day, with German permission, a detainee was permitted to cycle to the French units commanded by General Leclerc and tell them the town was “open”.
