Friday, 28 July 2023
Photo: Tim Brighton/Flickr

There are many forms of censorship but some of the most pernicious are historical. And some are uncomfortably close to home. We covered the issue of royal secrecy in the UK in our winter issue and the summer magazine, just launched, covers one of the darkest episodes in British history: the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands.

I have been fascinated by this subject for many years, so I was pleased to get the chance to investigate in more detail what took place. The island of Alderney is less well-known than neighbouring Guernsey and Jersey and holds an even bleaker wartime history. After the British inhabitants of the islands were evacuated, the Nazis constructed four labour camps for slave workers constructing Hitler’s giant defences known as the Atlantic Wall. At least one of these was later converted into an SS concentration camp.

While I was researching my piece for Index (Britain’s Holocaust island) I discovered that the UK government was planning an inquiry into the true scale of the atrocities conducted on British soil. It is not known how many were murdered on the island: estimates range from hundreds to tens of thousands.

Last weekend the Observer ran our scoop: (‘No more cover-up’: Nazi concentration camps on Channel Island finally to be officially investigated) and it went around the world. The story was picked up by the Washington Post, the Jerusalem Post and international broadcasters and dominated news bulletins over the weekend. On Thursday the UK Post-Holocaust Envoy Lord Pickles announced details of a panel of international experts to investigate the number who died. The World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Israel, Yad Vashem, will be advising the inquiry.

Now attention will likely turn to the Nazi war criminals who commanded Alderney and its murderous camps and questions will be asked about why the British authorities never brought them to justice.

Genocide is the ultimate denial of free expression and we at Index know how important it is to accurately report war crimes. The International Criminal Court was established as a response to the Holocaust and British lawyers have been instrumental in bringing perpetrators to justice since World War II. We support the work colleagues at The Reckoning Project collecting data about war crimes committed during Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression in Ukraine. We monitor, as best we can, the situation in China and Myanmar, where Muslim minorities are the victims of daily atrocities. But the historical record is also important. 

As a country we are rightly proud of our wartime record fighting fascism and building the post-war international institutions to protect human rights and bring war criminals to justice. We were also right to demand that Germany and countries occupied by the Nazis took full responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. The Channel Islands are a chilling reminder of what might have been if the Nazis had reached mainland Britain.

In the immediate aftermath of the war, it is perhaps understandable that British officials didn’t have the stomach to face up to what happened on Alderney. Eight decades later, the time has surely come for a full reckoning. It may be uncomfortable, but the Holocaust did happen on British soil. Even at the most cautious estimates, hundreds of people -- Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, North Africans and Spanish -- lie in mass graves on this tiny island off the coast of France.

As Labour MP Dame Margaret Hodge said at the weekend: “Now is the time for the British government and the Alderney authorities to finally face up to the true horror of what happened on British soil. There can be no lies and no more cover-up”.

Martin Bright, editor-at-large
 

All lose out when books are banned

Photo: Kennedy Library (CC-BY-NC.20)

it is shocking that 1,648 book titles are banned across the United States at the moment. Many of these books relate to sexuality and LGBTQ+ experiences, and some challenge historical realities, such as segregation and class. With these books banned, not only are authors literally being cancelled but minority communities are prevented from seeing characters like themselves in the literature that they read, writes Index CEO Ruth Anderson. 

From the archive

Book ends
by Alison Flood
Autumn 2018

Another week and another attack on Italian journalist Roberto Saviano, this time in the form of his forthcoming anti-mafia show being axed. Back in 2018 he spoke to Index about the banned book that most impacted him. “Censorship often intervenes, in cases like this, to prevent a story from generating awareness,” he said. Read the full interview here. 
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