The Nazi concentration camps on British soil the UK government tried to forget
▻https://www.codastory.com/rewriting-history/nazi-camp-alderney
Unlike the other islands of Jersey, Guernsey and Sark, where British residents lived under German occupation, the people of Alderney collectively decided to evacuate their homes in June 1940, when the fall of France was imminent. They did not return until December 1945. On this virtually deserted island –– a mere handful of islanders remained –– the German occupiers acted with impunity, building labor camps and SS-run concentration camps.
The camps operated under the system of “Vernichtung durch Arbeit” — extermination through hard labor — and hundreds, if not thousands of prisoners died here. They were worked to death, forced to build a vast network of fortifications as part Adolf Hiter’s “Atlantic Wall,” a system of defenses along the coast of continental Europe designed to deter allied invasion. The Channel Islands were a key part of this defense structure and Alderney was such a prized strategic possession, it was nicknamed “Adolf Island.”
[...] A question has always hung in the air. Why did the British government let evidence of German war crimes on its soil — the concentration camps and those who suffered in them — remain in obscurity? Why was no one prosecuted?
