Graves at only concentration camp on British soil under threat from energy project
Leaked report claims plan to build a power line through Alderney may cause 'great damage' to site which hosted Jewish prisoners of the Nazis
A leaked report suggests that a new energy project through the Channel Islands will do “great damage” to a gravesite where Jewish slave labourers are believed to be buried.
In an archaeological report seen by The Sunday Times, concern is raised that a power line between the UK and France will cut across the island of Alderney, where Hitler’s SS once guarded a concentration camp housing Jewish inmates.
Jews were imprisoned at Lager Sylt, one of four camps, and together with Lager Nordeney, one of two concentration camps built in 1942 and handed over to the SS in March 1943.
Inmates came from Sachsenhausen, a camp near Berlin, and one former inmate later recalled how “the most popular form of killing by the SS in Sylt was strangulation”.
While Nazi commanders burned all evidence and documents before their surrender, locals have since found hundreds of graves, believed to be those of Russian, French and Jewish labourers.
Archaeologists now say these graves could be destroyed by proposed £500 million energy scheme, which will link the British and French energy grids, and which is being funded by the European Union.
The report warns that damage has already been done and that “greater damage” will result if the remaining work goes ahead.
Board of Deputies Vice President Sheila Gewolb said: “These are the graves of people who were treated with great cruelty and brutality by the Nazis during the Second World War. It is the duty of those responsible for their upkeep that they are preserved and protected from harm.”
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