A shocking report reveals how hundreds of Jews and political prisoners were starved or beaten to death by the Nazis’ during their occupation of the Channel Islands in the Second World War.
The memo, titled Report on Atrocities Committed in Alderney, 1942-1945, was written by intelligence officer Captain Theodore Pantcheff for the British Government after the island was liberated in 1945 following Nazi Germany’s defeat.
It has come to light after the Sunday Times obtained a rare copy which was being held in the Russian archives.
Pantcheff obtained the testimonies of 3,000 witnesses, including former prisoners of war, German soldiers and civilians.
The officer uncovered evidence of mass graves as well as horrific stories of how SS troops who were guarding inmates were given bonuses of extra leave for ‘every five dead prisoners’.
The largest group sent to the two concentration camps set up on the island – Lager Sylt and Lager Norderney – were Russian, Polish and Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians, along with French Jews and German and Spanish political prisoners.
In total, at least 700 people died at the labour and concentration camps on Alderney, and more died travelling to or from them.
A shocking report reveals how hundreds of Jews and political prisoners were starved or beaten to death by the Nazis’ during their occupation of the Channel Islands in the Second World War. Pictured: German officers outside the Alderney branch of Lloyd’s Bank, which they turned into their headquarters
The memo (parts shown above), titled Report on Atrocities Committed in Alderney, 1942-1945, was written by intelligence officer Captain Theodore Pantcheff for the British Government after the island was liberated in 1945 following Nazi Germany’s defeat. It has come to light after the Sunday Times obtained a rare copy which was being held in the Russian archives
After the Nazis defeated the Allies in France in June 1940, new Prime Minister Winston Churchill had to make the difficult decision not to maintain the defence of the Channel Islands because they were deemed to be of no strategic importance.
It meant that troops who were stationed there left extremely quickly, leaving islanders at the mercy of German invaders.
Whilst Guernsey and Jersey continued to have large civilian populations, most residents of Alderney had been moved out – making the island the perfect location on which to build four labour camps in 1941.
Two of these sites were turned by Hitler’s murderous SS into concentration camps in 1943.
Pantcheff’s report reveals how Vernichtung durch Arbeit’- which translates as extermination through labour – operated there.
In total, more than 6,000 people were taken to Alderney by the Nazis.
Workers were forced to carry out 12 hours of ‘heavy construction work’ each day, whilst being fed starvation diets of ‘thin cabbage soup’ for lunch and dinner and coffee ‘without milk or sugar’ for breakfast.
Pantcheff obtained the testimonies of 3,000 witnesses, including former prisoners of war, German soldiers and civilians. The officer uncovered evidence of mass graves as well as horrific stories of how SS troops who were guarding inmates were given bonuses of extra leave for ‘every five dead prisoners’. Pictured: German soldiers parading through Marais Square, Alderney, during their occupation of the Channel Islands
They were housed in damp and structurally unsound barracks and were not given a single day off a week.
Their work included the laying of cables and the building of bunkers, tunnels and walls.
Pantcheff referred to several witness statements to explain that the ‘common cause’ of death in 1943 was starvation, ‘assisted by physical ill-treatment and overwork’.
He said that workers were almost never allowed to report sick, unless their physical condition meant work was ‘impossible’.
Despite harsh winters, foreign workers did not appear to have been given ‘any additional clothing’, Pantcheff said.
He said ‘arbitrary beatings were a daily occurrence in Norderney and Helgoland camps.
‘Workers were beaten for the most trivial offences, against harsh regulations, such as failure to execute drill movement properly, or endeavouring to acquire extra food from the garbage pail.
On occasion workers were beaten for no reason at all. The beatings were carried out… on all parts of the victims’ body, the fist, foot, stick…’
The SS also ‘competed’ for extra leave by ‘shooting prisoners for the smallest offences’.
One sick game involved throwing a cigarette butt on the floor and then shooting whoever tried to pick it up.
Another witness in the report described how the walls of Norderney commander Karl Theiss’s office were repainted ‘three or four times’ to remove blood stains.’
Witnesses also described the presence of mass graves. One claimed 300 to 400 Jews were buried in this way at Longis Common on Alderney.
Despite the horrors detailed in the report, only a small number of Germans were ever punished for their crimes in the Channel Islands.
Pantcheff’s report included a list of Nazis’ names and the crimes they had been accused of, but the UK did not bring prosecutions.
Whilst the contents of the report are now mostly available in the National Archives, they are spread across a number of individual documents
It is rumoured that a full version of the report held by the British Government was thrown away years ago to create storage space.
The Plantcheff report gives further detail to what was previously known about war crimes committed by the Nazis in the Channel Islands.
In January, Conservative MP Matthew Offord called on the Government to release documents about a mass grave at Alderney.
In a Commons debate following Holocaust Memorial Day, Mr Offord (Hendon) said: ‘I’ve been advised that a considerable amount is already known of what lies beneath the ground.
‘This is because the British Government is still sitting on Embargoed files which detail what they found at the cemeteries after the war and their own excavations of the cemetery.
‘So today I am calling on the Government to find the missing records of the 1961 exhumation and the detailed records that the UK made of each set of remains by the British excavation at Alderney.
‘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.’
In a debate to mark Holocaust Memorial Day last year, Mr Offord advocated excavating the graves to identify the bodies.
However, he said in January that he had changed his mind as Jewish law forbids the transfer of remains from one grave to another, even if it is to a more respected site.
He told the Commons: ‘I expressed my personal view that unmarked graves, mass graves and locations of bodies hidden by their murderers are not proper graves in themselves and I believe that it is appropriate for the identification of bodies to be undertaken.
‘Some people took my words as advocating the full exhumation of the Channel Islands but that is not necessary or even desirable.’
He added: ‘Putting aside the religious issues, it has been stressed upon me that opening mass graves is not as revealing as one might imagine and the gains in knowledge are slight compared to the moral and spiritual costs of disturbance.
‘Knowledge already exists about the sites and the combination of non-intrusive means of investigation, World War Two aerial imagery combined with research into records should be sufficient to tell us with some certitude what lies beneath Longis Common.’
Former Sylt prisoner Wilhelm Wernegau recalled to the Daily Mail in 2017 how the camp’s cook was strangled by the SS because they did not like his food.
‘The Germans shot him right there,’ he said.
‘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.
Alderney commandant Oberst Schwalm Germany surrenders to Brigadier Alfred Ernest Snow after Nazi Germany’s defeat in 1945
The officer uncovered evidence of mass graves as well as horrific stories of how SS troops who were guarding inmates were given bonuses of extra leave for ‘every five dead prisoners’
‘Sometimes their lips, nose and ears had been eaten by rats. ‘There was a special hut where the corpses were piled.
‘Later, they were taken away, loaded onto trucks and dumped in the sea.
‘We were fed just water with a few bits of turnip floating in it, so life was a constant struggle for food.
‘I found a rubbish heap near to the construction site where I worked and was filling a bag with vegetable peelings and cabbage leaves when someone set a dog on me. ‘It attacked again and again, tearing all my clothing.
‘When it let go, I was beaten with a stick by a German. I was very weak at the time. There were about 500 men in my camp, and at least 300 died while I was there.’
Hitler, as well as Churchill, recognised the Channel Islands had no practical use in the war and their main function for the Nazi regime was as a promotional tool.
According to the propaganda of the Nazi party, ceasing the deserted and undefended islands was the ‘last stepping stone before the conquest of mainland Britain’.
Pantcheff referred to several witness statements to explain that the ‘common cause’ of death in 1943 was starvation, ‘assisted by physical ill-treatment and overwork’. He said that workers were almost never allowed to report sick, unless their physical condition meant work was ‘impossible’