The Nazi Occupation of Jersey

Summary

Summary of "The Nazi Occupation of Jersey" – Dan Snow's History Hit

Release Date: May 18, 2025

In this compelling episode of Dan Snow's History Hit, historian Dan Snow delves into the harrowing and resilient history of Jersey during World War II. Through vivid storytelling, expert interviews, and personal accounts, Snow uncovers the complexities of Nazi occupation, the struggles of the islanders, and the profound impact of liberation. This summary captures the key discussions, insights, and conclusions presented throughout the episode.

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1. Commemorating Liberation Day

[00:01] Dan Snow sets the scene on Liberation Day in St. Helier, Jersey's bustling capital. He describes the vibrant celebrations marking the 80th anniversary of liberation from Nazi occupation in May 1945:

"There's an urgency to this commemoration because the people of Jersey understood what it was to live under the yoke of tyranny..."

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2. The Path to Occupation

Before the war, Lucy Leighton explains Jersey's peaceful existence and economic activities, highlighting its French cultural influences and agricultural exports:

[06:20] Lucy Leighton: "Jersey had been fought over a lot in the past in American Revolutionary War, but since then, in the First World War, it didn't come under threat."

Contrary to these peaceful times, the rapid advance of German forces in 1940 caught the islanders off guard. The British government's decision to evacuate the island’s military forces left Jersey vulnerable:

"The British entrusted that they wouldn't be able to defend Jersey anyway... accept the inevitable, just leave the island open to occupation." [05:58] Dan Snow

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3. German Occupation and Its Impact

On 1 July 1940, German troops occupied Jersey, transforming it into a strategic fortress as part of Hitler's Atlantic Wall. Lucy Leighton emphasizes the severity of the occupation:

"Under German occupation, islanders suffered under a repressive regime and so did the thousands of forced and enslaved laborers." [01:24] Lucy Leighton

Dana Snow narrates the immediate aftermath, including the tragic bombing of Saint Helier's harbor and the imposition of strict restrictions on daily life:

"They used to give us sweets... These young Germans were no different, but they did think... waiting for peace." [10:13] Christopher Addy

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4. Life Under Occupation

The episode explores the daily hardships faced by Jersey residents, including food shortages, forced labor, and the psychological toll of living under Nazi rule. Captain Michael Billings, operations manager at the Jersey War Tunnels, provides an insider's view of the brutal labor conditions:

"They pushed them to the point of annihilation as strength of the human body can handle." [21:22] Michael Billings

Personal stories, such as that of Harold Billings, a survivor of the Versac internment camp, highlight the extreme suffering endured:

"The camp at Belsen... Jungle law reigned among the prisoners. At night, you killed or were killed." [27:46] Michael Billings

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5. Resistance and Collaboration

Despite the oppressive regime, acts of resistance and collaboration emerged. Lola Garvin recounts the courageous efforts of individuals like Dorothea Lebrock, who sheltered Jewish fugitive Heidi Berku:

"She hid Haiti in her home for 18 months... an incredible story of bravery." [30:00] Lola Garvin

Conversely, collaboration cases, such as that of Alexandrine Beaudin, illustrate the moral complexities faced by some islanders:

"They turned themselves in to the police for their own safety... but lots of families had lingering grievances." [46:32] Lola Garvin

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6. The Path to Liberation

As Allied forces advanced, Jersey remained isolated, facing severe shortages until the Red Cross ship Vega arrived in December 1944, averting imminent starvation. The culmination of these efforts led to liberation in May 1945. Dan Snow vividly describes the emotional scenes as Royal Navy officers landed:

"There were cheers and there were celebrations in the square... After five long years, Jersey was finally free." [35:56] Dan Snow

Liberation brought immediate challenges, including clearing mines, restoring infrastructure, and repatriating both islanders and German prisoners. Lola Garvin details the extensive efforts to return to normalcy:

"There was a huge process of re-establishing supplies of food and medicines and clothing." [36:27] Lola Garvin

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7. Aftermath and Legacy

The psychological aftermath of occupation persisted long after physical freedoms were restored. Survivors like Michael Billings share personal struggles with trauma and familial disruptions:

"The family just broke up because my parents' health was in a very poor state." [45:03] Michael Billings

Despite these hardships, the shared history has become integral to Jersey's identity. Lola Garvin reflects on the enduring legacy:

"Occupation was the formative experience of islanders during the 20th century... it is so much a part of our island identity." [47:55] Lola Garvin

Dan Snow concludes by highlighting the importance of remembering and understanding this period, encouraging listeners to visit Jersey's historical sites to gain deeper insights:

"These museums and bunkers... are available to explore all year round." [48:35] Dan Snow

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Notable Quotes

• Dan Snow [00:01]: "These are the greatest stories from the past that help us understand the present."
• Lucy Leighton [06:20]: "In 1939, Jersey felt like a very safe place to be."
• Chris Addy [10:01]: "Much was the amount of chocolate all the Germans were buying."
• Michael Billings [14:23]: "There were about 650 of us, men, women and children."
• Lola Garvin [46:14]: "It's an incredible story of bravery."

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Conclusion

Dan Snow's episode on the Nazi Occupation of Jersey offers a comprehensive and poignant exploration of a lesser-known chapter of World War II. Through historical analysis and personal testimonies, the episode underscores the resilience of the Jersey community, the complexities of human behavior under extreme conditions, and the lasting impact of occupation on collective memory. This in-depth narrative not only educates but also honors the enduring spirit of those who lived through these tumultuous times.

Transcript

[Dan Snow]

This is the sound of Liberation day in Jersey. I'm standing on a very, very busy street right in the heart of St. Helier, the biggest town. There is a parade of people marching past all around me from balconies and flagpoles. We've got union flags and the flag of Jersey flying taut in the easterly breeze that's blowing today. The sun is out. There's not a cloud in the sky. It's perfect weather because thousands of people of Jersey have come out to mark, to commemorate and celebrate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of this is from Nazi occupation in May 1945. And there's an urgency to this commemoration because the people of Jersey, they understood what it was to live under the yoke of tyranny, to live under Nazi military occupation. And this is the anniversary of their liberation and clearly they intend to celebrate it. The only British territory in Europe ever.

[Lucy Leighton]

Occupied by the Nazis was here in the channel islands.

[Dan Snow]

From 1940 through the very end of.

[Lucy Leighton]

The war in Europe, Jersey was under Nazi domination. The Germans turned Jersey and the islands around it into an impregnable fortress. Jersey became both a base from which.

[Dan Snow]

He one day hoped to invade Britain.

[Lucy Leighton]

But also a key part of Hitler's defensive Atlantic war. Under German occupation, islanders suffered under a repressive regime and so did the thousands of forced and enslaved laborers who were.

[Dan Snow]

Brought to construct the Nazis extensive defensive network across the island.

[Lucy Leighton]

Today in Jersey, the history of its occupation is still very poignant. It feels very present from the annual liberation commemorations in May and to the vast number of historical sites that are.

[Dan Snow]

Now open to the public.

[Lucy Leighton]

Across this beautiful island there's an arterial network of hidden Nazi tunnels.

[Dan Snow]

There are fortresses and museums.

[Lucy Leighton]

Jersey's landmarks give us the best insight.

[Dan Snow]

We have into what Britain under German.

[Lucy Leighton]

Occupation might have looked like.

[Dan Snow]

You're listening to Dan Snow's history and in this very special episode I'm in Jersey to tell you its incredible story of occupation and liberation, of its suffering.

[Lucy Leighton]

And resilience under enemy control.

[Dan Snow]

I've come down to one of Jersey's many beaches now. Wide golden sand. And as if on cue, a Spitfire is being doing low passes over our head. In the distance I can see France. I'm only about 14 miles away from the French coast, which is a stone's throw in military terms, or more accurately a heavy shells trajectory. And yet despite the fact that we're really, really close to France, Jersey and the rest of the Channel lines are defined as being part of the British Isles, really their British territory. So as German forces swept across France in the summer of 1940, well, these islands were a tempting prize. They were very close to the French coast and they were British sovereign territory. It would be one in the eye for Winston Churchill, and it demonstrated that Britain was unable to defend all of its far flung empire, even islands so close to its homelands. The Brits, for their part, well, they made a controversial decision, I suppose. They decided not to try and defend Jersey. They actually did the opposite. They withdrew ostentatiously. All military from the island, all troops and weapons were evacuated. The belief in Whitehall, which was understandable, was that they wouldn't be able to defend Jersey anyway. There would be a huge number of civilian casualties if some kind of heroic last stand were to take place on the island. So instead, the humane thing to do was just accept the inevitable, just leave the island open to occupation. The British did offer to evacuate people. So in just a couple of days, in that summer of 1940, Islanders were forced to make a decision. Should they abandon their homes and evacuate to the mainland, which for many people would have been an unknown territory, a foreign land, effectively, or do they stay with their friends, their community, their family? And just around 7,000 people left. Well, something like 40,000 stayed in Jersey. It did not take long for the Germans to arrive. On June 28, the German aircraft bombed the harbour in Saint Helier. They thought a line of lorries carrying potatoes for export was in fact a military convoy. They killed 10 civilians, which was a tragedy and an ominous sign of what was to follow. In the days to come, more and more German aircraft flew over Jersey, and this time they dropped something a little bit different. They dropped letters demanding the island surrender. They demanded that the inhabitants fly white flags and paint white crosses on the ground, knowing they didn't really have any choice, fearing what would happen if they refused, the islanders acquiesced. So it was on the 1st of July, 1940, that German troops arrived in Jersey. At first, only a couple of thousand, but over the years that would grow to well over 10,000 men. I'm going to tear myself away from this beautiful day on the beach, with Spitfires flying overhead and little wavelets lapping against the jagged rocks at low tide. Because I'm very keen to go and check out the Jersey Museum that overlooks this bay. And in the museum they've got an astonishing and, well, quite chilling collection of objects. They're going to tell me the next chapter of this story. They've got cartloads of German helmets that were stuffed into abandoned tunnels. They've got diaries of local people punished by the Nazis. So I'm going to head in there and I'm going to meet curator Lucy Leighton from Jersey Heritage to pick up the story. Right, Lucy, thanks for having me here.

[Lola Garvin]

Pleasure. Thank you for coming.

[Dan Snow]

How do you characterise Jersey before the Second World War, when it felt like a corner of. Well, to most people it felt like a corner of Britain.

[Lola Garvin]

I think it was different in character. It had a more French feel, particularly in the country parishes. The local language, Geriere, would have been spoken quite widely. Not so much in St Helier. Lots of tourists coming to visit the island, but also exports of particularly Jersey Royal potatoes and outdoor grown tomatoes. They were really important to the island's economy. So lots of activity around the harbour.

[Dan Snow]

And Jersey had been fought over a lot in the past in American Revolutionary War, but since then, in the First World War, it didn't come under threat. Did people think the same would be true of the Second World War in 1939? What was the expectation?

[Lola Garvin]

I think in 1939, yes, Jersey felt like a very safe place to be. In fact, in March 1940, the island's tourism committee was actually advertising wartime holidays to the island. So they didn't see Jersey as under threat. Little did they know, a few short months later, the island would be occupied.

[Dan Snow]

Obviously, the whole world reeled at the success of the German army in the Battle of France. It just took everyone by surprise. People will be familiar with the story of Dunkirk and the fall of the French government, but on Jersey, people must have watched the news with increasing consternation because they knew it would affect them.

[Lola Garvin]

Well, the war was creeping closer. There were British troops stationed here, but the British government decided to withdraw them. So the islands were declared a demilitarised zone. And then, of course, I think that really made islanders realise that they were on the front line. A lot of people decided to evacuate, but for some islanders, they may never have really left the island before. And to go to uproot everything and go to what is essentially a foreign country, to go to England and throw yourself on the mercy of strangers would have been a really hard decision to make. And some people running farms, they couldn't just abandon their animals and leave. So it was a very hard decision to make. And in the end, only about 6,600 people decided to evacuate.

[Dan Snow]

Was that evacuation sort of well managed or was it a bit of a panic to sort of get out before the Germans arrived?

[Lola Garvin]

Yeah, I think it all happened very quickly. People were limited with the amount of luggage they could take. There are some photographs of families sitting at the harbour waiting for boats. I think initially it was probably fairly well organised. By the end, people were filling sort of potato boats and coal boats and any way they could find to get off the island. And there were also stories about people who were queuing in the warm sun, planning to evacuate, and then actually, in the end, deciding, perhaps we should stay. And so then people returned home. So it was a very confusing time. People had to make those decisions, what turned out to be really momentous decisions, because they didn't know they'd be leaving their homes for five years. But they had to make those decisions very quickly.

[Dan Snow]

And when the Germans arrived, was there an orderly transition of power or was there violence?

[Lola Garvin]

I mean, the Germans used the local newspaper, the Evening Post, they were in control of that and censored it. They used it to deliver all their notices, to inform people about the restrictions that were going to start being placed on daily life. And those did come about very quickly. I mean, they introduced things like German signage. People had to drive on the other side of the road. Gradually there were orders banning cameras. Later on, radios or wireless sets were confiscated. Curfews were introduced, Rationing was introduced, because being an island, they had to be very careful about managing supplies. So, yes, there was a gradual process of more and more restrictions being placed on daily life.

[Lucy Leighton]

Over the past 80 years, Jersey Heritage has collected an astonishing archive of accounts from islanders that recall the occupation. This selection of memories shared by BBC Jersey Radio show on how children noticed life changing, is particularly interesting. It humanizes the first wave of German occupiers in a striking way, how those on the ground, at least in the beginning, the regular German soldier, had some commonality with the islanders. You get a sense of how this occupation was just something they were all caught up in. No one knew then how hard things would get.

[Chris Addy]

During the first days of the occupation.

[Lola Garvin]

The one thing that I noticed very.

[Chris Addy]

Much was the amount of chocolate all the Germans were buying. As we'd had plenty of chocolate in the shops, I didn't realize that perhaps there was none in Germany or wherever they came from.

[Dan Snow]

They, of course, had been deprived of.

[Chris Addy]

Consumer goods in Germany for some time and this was a sort of holiday for them. We had been brought up under a barrage of propaganda, like everyone else, that these were terrible people. Well, of course, when these ordinary people came here, these ordinary young soldiers who were interested, like all other young soldiers all over the world, in basically in entertainment, in girls, in food, and when they were going home on leave and These young Germans were no different, but they did think, because of their lightning sweep through Europe and they'd done so well as an army, that they thought the Channel Islands were a stepping stone to England. And they were all highly elated, all in very good mood and very good frame of mind and very happy.

[Dan Snow]

Did Hitler make a big deal of occupying Jersey? Was it a propaganda coup? The fact that the.

[Lola Garvin]

Absolutely British territory. It was a huge coup for the Germans. There are some extraordinary photographs that they took of British policemen standing next to German guards outside the town hall. There's another one that springs to mind of a German soldier buying an ice cream from Jersey. Ice cream seller. These were really powerful images and Hitler used this to. I suppose what they wanted to do was give Britain a sense of, you know, you might be next.

[Lucy Leighton]

The people of Jersey were used as pawns in Hitler's games with Britain in other ways too.

[Michael Billings]

What had happened is the Brits in Tehran had imprisoned some Germans who were in Tehran, which was a neutral country, and Hitler didn't forgive them and he said, I want reprisals. And he thought he'd take hostage. So we'll take Channel Islanders. We were bargaining chips.

[Lucy Leighton]

This is Lola Garvin. She's a native Jersey woman who was taken with her family by the Nazis on Hitler's direct orders and sent to an internment camp on the continent. She was one of those 618 Islanders who was imprisoned at Versac in southern Germany.

[Dan Snow]

She's now chairman of the Saint Helier.

[Lucy Leighton]

And Bad Versac Twinning Committee that connects the two communities through their shared history.

[Michael Billings]

On 15th September 1942, I was eight months old. A policeman came knocking on the door with the document, presented it to my dad and we were given 24 hours to be down at the harbour with one suitcase per family, warm clothes and enough food for 48 hours. And that was it. So the panic situation because one didn't know where one was going, how long it would be. It was the uncertainty. Our poor dog had to be put down. All these personal things in such a short time as a family.

[Dan Snow]

You had to go into the docks. 24 hours notice.

[Michael Billings]

Yes.

[Dan Snow]

And get on a ship. And you could have gone anywhere.

[Michael Billings]

Could have gone anywhere. It took two days to get from Jersey to Budvoorsa because we went in this dirty old coal tender ship to Saint Marlow and from there we went just about all over Western Europe in the train, only traveling at night. And they put us in a siding in the daytime because they wanted to preserve us, of course. And Then we got to Biberak to a camp, had a problem in Bibarek with the Guernsey crowd who'd arrived because of the rivalry between Jersey and the real enemy. Yes, that's right. Actually, you say that. And we just didn't get on. The families didn't get on with the Guernsey families. And so they had to move the Jersey crowd out. And so they moved us down south to this old, what they call a castle. But it was a sort of a run down manor house. And it was in a parlor state, very dirty. There'd been some French prisoners of war there. The women were literally having to scrape the dirt off the floors and the furniture with shards of glass, it was so filthy.

[Dan Snow]

How many of you were there, were there?

[Michael Billings]

There were about 650 of us, men, women and children. And the men were put in men's dormitories. And then the women and children put in these huge dormitories with like 30, 40 screaming kids and women who didn't know each other. And you were there like 24, 7 with these stuck in this room, except when you were allowed to go out for a breath of fresh air.

[Dan Snow]

So really you say in terms of. But you're imprisoned.

[Michael Billings]

Really, we were. It was a prison. It was a prison behind barbed wire, only allowed to go out into the grounds for walks once every two weeks. But the food was horrendous. Black bread and potatoes and sort of horrible, liquid, soupy stuff. But I hasten to add, the German people in the villages were absolutely wonderful. They were so kind to the kids. So as we sort of marched past the little houses in the village, they used to come and give us sweets. And also they'd made wooden toys. So I kept some of the toys and took them back to Jersey with me.

[Dan Snow]

And these are now some of your earliest memories because you sort of grew up there.

[Michael Billings]

Yes, that's right, yes.

[Dan Snow]

First three years, there must have been such fear initially.

[Michael Billings]

I think so. It was the horror of everyday life, the stress of confinement, of being in such close proximity to all these other people with all their problems and their states of mind.

[Lucy Leighton]

Back in Jersey, things were also pretty bleak. Food supplies dwindled as German occupiers ramped up their activity on the island. From 1941, the Germans set to work turning the island into an impregnable fortress. To protect it from potential Allied invasion, it became a key part of Hitler's defensive Atlantic Wall. Today you can find coffee shops housed in repurposed German bunkers, surf shacks operating out of old fortifications. And here you can find one of the best preserved feats of Nazi engineering left in Europe. Hewn into the rock, the Jersey war tunnels are an extraordinary burrow of tunnels stretching deep into the earth for over a kilometer. Built at first as an artillery garage, it was later turned into an underground hospital in anticipation of a bloody Allied invasion. Its complex winding galleries with rooms for medical wars, stores, operations and offshoot tunnels leading into darkness give astonishing insight into the building power and the sinister ambition of the German war machine. This is Captain Michael Billings, the operations manager at the tunnels, which now houses a multi sensory museum telling the story of Jersey's five years of German occupation.

[Dan Snow]

Michael, this is a vast site, isn't it?

[Captain Michael Billings]

Yes, absolutely.

[Dan Snow]

What was the purpose originally?

[Captain Michael Billings]

So this was built as part of the 1941 plan as part of the Atlantic wall. So when that was being put together by Hitler it had to go all the way from North Norway right the way down to the Pyrenees. And the Channel Islands were included psychologically. They'd taken a piece of British territory and they wanted to hold on to it and they wanted to really put it to the British that we've got this. So they put a force on here and organization Todd was put together and that meant building a series of tunnels. Now there's many tunnels on Jersey, some embryonic, some completely finished. This is partially finished. It was built an artillery garage. This is part of the place where they would have looked after and serviced the guns.

[Dan Snow]

Right. So it's almost an industrial and sort of storage facility down.

[Captain Michael Billings]

Hence the size, the vast size, a kilometer of tunnels, finished, huge ceilings.

[Dan Snow]

So they're just burrowing into the rock that is Jersey and anything they can put underground they're putting underground because they're expecting Allied bombing, naval bombardment. So they've got to bury everything.

[Captain Michael Billings]

Yes. The Atlantic war came into being because of how successful the Sea Creed line was. So they said, right, let's build an Atlantic wall and this will stop an Allied advance. They picked this location for one of two reasons, the ease of digging into the rocks and the location of proximity to the airport. So the anti aircraft battery is in a position to defend the airport and assault any planes that go ahead at vast heights. And it was converted to a hospital when the war was changing and they thought a land invasion was imminent. At the anti aircraft battery they put an infantry screen around it because that would repel a land forces attack. And they converted this to a hospital which involved sinking a well which is behind me, adding central heating with two massive boilers to put central heating in, improving the Drainage, making it airtight. So when you walk in here, you go through a series of doors. There's two on the left and two on the right at both entrance and exits. And the idea is it's somewhere you can clean before you go into a clean and sterile environment. This tunnel is an absolute masterpiece in skill and design.

[Dan Snow]

So they turn a sort of industrial storage and repair site into really an underground town.

[Captain Michael Billings]

Pretty much you'd have 500 people here. That's minus the staff. When we walk down the first corridor, you went through a series of rooms there, which would have been the bedrooms for the staff. As we went to the corner and turned right, that would have been the kitchens. There was one escape shaft there, so the exhaust for the stove would have been there. As you walk further down the escape shaft, there would have been the exhaust for the two boilers that were there to heat the tunnels. So really the technology down here was state of the art. If you used to build it today, it'd still be state of the art.

[Lucy Leighton]

When you walk into the cavernous tunnels, immediately feel the cold. I don't think that's just the underground humidity. These tunnels were built by hundreds of slave laborers brought here to the islands by Germans, mostly from Eastern Europe, to build fortifications. It's as though somehow there's a residue of the suffering that took place here, lingering like condensation on the walls. It's estimated that more than 5,000 forced and enslaved laborers were brought to Jersey in the war.

[Captain Michael Billings]

They started to categorize slaves from different categories. The worst, the underdogs, were the Russians. They brought them over in their droves, treated them appallingly, fed them virtually nothing. And then it ranged through different parts of Europe, North Africa. And these people were tiered. How worthless were they in the eyes of society? Russians sitting at the bottom and the rest in different rankings. And to add insult to injury, you got a different colored card. So depending on where you sat in the system, you'd be on a black card, a red card, a yellow card. So you get a different coloured card and that would be issued to you and that would give you your status, your rational allowance, your allocation for water, where you stayed. And when you read some of the history books, Jewels and Jackboots by John Nettles, I put that book down at the point when he graphically describes how they hot tarred the feet of the Russian workers and then basically put sand and bits of gravel on them to give them mock up shoes. So at that point it was that graphic and that emotive to Me of how one person could treat another, how a nation could treat another nation, given all of that that went on, being marched to the street, marched into the sea and washed naked. Because the concrete construction is used to pull the water on the island. It's such a resource, heavy production.

[Dan Snow]

So it's likely that people will work to death in these tunnels.

[Captain Michael Billings]

They run a very, very fine line because they needed the tunnels built. If they killed their entire workforce through exhaustion, the tunnels wouldn't get built. So they ran them to the limits of human capability. There was a night shift and a day shift. They drilled, blasted during the night, ran ventilation equipment, scraped it all out and then concrete shuttered and built in during the day. So it was a two team operation and they pushed them to the point of annihilation as strength of the human body can handle.

[Dan Snow]

This section that we're standing in now is very evocative, isn't it? Because it's the unfinished section. There's a lot of spoil that's still in there. There's some rusty old machinery. Just you can imagine people chipping away at the rock and blasting out.

[Captain Michael Billings]

Yes, absolutely. As part of the tunnel guest experience, there's an audio visual where it shows workers in an unfinished tunnel environment chipping away at the ceiling rock in the process of bringing the ceiling down. So you can now hear the rocks and the blasting going on. The workers are going to come into view now. You can sense from what we can see and what we can imagine, this would have been a very cold, dark and terrifying experience. You're always chancing with death. They had very limited equipment. You can see them there with poles and sticks, hammers and picks. They used to use things called dog irons. And a dog iron is to hold a shale plate, sort of a U shaped bracket that they'd use to try and hold shale seams in place and stopped them falling down on them. But it was at high risk and a dangerous job, especially considering there was virtually no health and safety protocols, no hard hats or safety equipment. It was just people in rags, bare feet or tarred feet chipping away, making this underground kingdom of tunnels.

[Dan Snow]

And a lot of these would be Soviet prisoners of war.

[Captain Michael Billings]

Yes, a lot of Russians that would have been down here. There are 22 people still down here. There was a collapse in the tunnels. They couldn't get them out. They tried and tried and tried. They're in an unfinished part of the tunnel. This is their tomb. This is where their resting place is. An absolutely terrible, terrifying, frightening ordeal.

[Lucy Leighton]

These prisoners were housed in 13 locations across the island. They were made up of men from across Europe and North Africa, boys as young as 15 and some men too old for conscription. Locals knew about the camps and would head up to the fences to share what food they could spare.

[Dan Snow]

There were stories of relationships developing between.

[Lucy Leighton]

Inmates and women on the island. Some marriages were even permitted, mostly for the Spanish and Belgian prisoners. And when the war ended, those men stayed on Jersey with their partners. And the descendants of those relationships still live here today. There's one particularly famous story about a woman, Louisa Gould, who defied the Germans and risked everything to harbor a young Russian fugitive who'd escaped. She helped him because he reminded her of her son who died fighting in Europe. This is Chris Addy, sites curator at the Jersey Museum.

[Chris Addy]

Louisa Gould was a shopkeeper in a rural location in St Juan, which is the western parish of the island. On one particular occasion in 1942, a Russian by the name of Feodor Buri arrived at her home, who had escaped from his camp in ST1's and was desperately trying to find shelter. He had tried to escape on a number of occasions prior to. She felt like she wanted to do something for another mother's son, was an expression that she used. But she took Theodore in and they chose a different name for him, just so there was less likelihood of him being discovered. So he became known as Bill, and he was there for around two years.

[Lucy Leighton]

The story goes that she altered his clothes to fit him better and took comfort in having a young man in the house who she could take care of as she grieved. Initially, Theodore hid away from the windows, but eventually the pair became more relaxed. They would take walks together. Apparently they'd go to church on Sunday together, Theodore disguised in Louisa's son's old clothes. He took the name Bill. He learned English. They would read together and play cards. He became part of her family and was moved between their homes for protection. But after two years in hiding, Louise's neighbor gave the Germans a tip off and her house was searched.

[Chris Addy]

Fortunately, there was enough time for Bill to be relocated to another home. But nevertheless, evidence was found in the house of Bill's presence. And also other forbidden material, I believe, including a radio was found, and a number of other people were implicated, including her brother, Harold Lodrulinek, a schoolteacher.

[Lucy Leighton]

Louisa was sent off to prison on the continent before being transferred to Ravensbruck concentration camp in Germany in unthinkable conditions. In her mid-50s, she struggled to keep.

[Dan Snow]

Up with the workload.

[Lucy Leighton]

She was deemed expendable. She was sent to the gas chambers and died on 13th February 1945.

[Chris Addy]

Her brother passed through a number of concentration camps and eventually was liberated from Bergen Belsen. And he's the only British man known to have survived that experience. And he had written extensively and taken part in broadcasts about his experiences in the camps. But there's a quotation that we have here from Harold. He described the camp at Belsen as a place with no food, no water, Sleep was impossible. We had to rise at 3.30am all my time here was spent in heaving dead bodies into mass graves. Jungle law reigned among the prisoners. At night, you killed or were killed. Harold was actually liberated there along with all of the other captives in mid April of 45. He had an extended convalescence, but he was actually able to testify in the Belson trial at Lundberg in October of 1945.

[Dan Snow]

So the channel Islands certainly didn't escape some of the unimaginable horrors that the rest of occupied Europe faced.

[Chris Addy]

Yeah, there were many victims, and we know that there were between 800 and 850 people who were imprisoned locally in the Gloucester street prison. So those people may have been found guilty of crimes, including listening to radio, circulating the news, stealing German supplies, engaging in sabotage, or generally sort of acts of defiance and disobedience, including daubing the letter V for victory.

[Lola Garvin]

Resistance in Jersey took a slightly different form because being a small island, there weren't sort of hills to disappear up into. So resistance did take part in very small groups or sometimes within sort of groups of family members and friends. And there were individuals who also put themselves at incredible risk to help other people. I mean, one story in particular springs to mind, which is of Dorothea Lebrock, who was a Jersey woman living in a fairly small terraced house in St Helier, who sheltered in her home a Jewish woman called Heidi Berku, who was on the run from the Germans. She was actually of Jewish heritage, so the Germans had introduced restrictions against the few Jewish people living in the island during the occupation. She had her registration card marked with a J. Despite this, she was actually working as a translator for the Germans, and she was under suspicion for having stolen petrol coupons to give to a local doctor so he could visit patients who were in need of medical care. Because of her Jewish status, she was very vulnerable and she actually faked her suicide. So she left a suicide note, left a pile of her clothes on the beach and hoped that the Germans would think that she had disappeared into the water and drowned herself. In fact, she'd gone into hiding at the home of Dorothea Lebrock. The Germans weren't convinced by her story, so they put a notice in the local paper with her photograph, all her details, calling for information and making it very clear that anyone who aided her would face the severest penalties. But Dorothea Lebrock, despite the threat to her personal well being, her threat to her life, she hid Haiti in her home for 18 months. As I say, it was a very narrow house in town. It's not like hiding someone in a barn in a farmyard out in the country. There were neighbours who might have have informed on them. They were having to share their rations. It's an incredible story of bravery. It must have been very difficult to be cooped up together in this house for 18 months. But what's extraordinary is that after the liberation, Heidi Berkou went to the Jersey authorities and reported herself as being alive and well, having sheltered in Dorothea Lebrock's home for the 18 months of the war. So we have this note in her immigration file where she tells her story.

[Dan Snow]

Amazing. And luckily, they were not undiscovered.

[Lola Garvin]

Yeah, they were undiscovered. I think they must have had help from people to keep them going through those 18 months, just in terms of food. But they survived the occupation and lived to tell the tale. And actually, Heidi went on to marry a German soldier that she'd met in Jersey before. She went into hiding and I think probably helped her with rations and medicine when she needed it. So, again, showing the complexities of these stories, even though she was a Jewish woman in hiding, there was a friendly German soldier who assisted her. And later on they left the island but were married.

[Lucy Leighton]

As the war on, things became increasingly desperate on Jersey. The Channel Islands were completely cut off from the rest of the German Empire.

[Lola Garvin]

After D Day, there was no opportunity to bring in any additional supply lines. Rations became very, very strict. There was a black market operating, so perhaps people were able to get a bit here and there. People exchanged things, but things got very dire, particularly in that winter of 1944. Islanders were really saved from starvation by the arrival of the Red Cross ship Vega, right at the end of December 1944. And that bought desperately needed food supplies. Without that, I think the islands would have faced starvation.

[Chris Addy]

Many women could be seen to be suffering from malnutrition because they had undoubtedly sacrificed their rations to implement those of their children. Feeding the baby was a problem, but the farmer across the road was very kind and used to bring us milk, extra milk after curfew, when it was dark. But unfortunately this had to stop because there was an informer next door to him and if he'd been caught, he would have been head up by the Germans.

[Dan Snow]

But people remained hopeful who tuned into their secret radios.

[Lucy Leighton]

Listening to the BBC, to the news of the advancing Allied armies closing in on Berlin. They knew freedom was coming. Then, on 8 May 1945, they heard the words the world had been waiting for.

[Chris Addy]

The representative of the German High Command and of Grand Admiral Donitz, the designated.

[Michael Billings]

Head of the German state, signed the.

[Chris Addy]

Act of Unconditional Surrender of all German land.

[Dan Snow]

Churchill's speech was broadcast in St Helier. For the first time since the occupation, the bailiff, chief official of Jersey, was able to address his people.

[Lucy Leighton]

But it was about managing expectations. While the mainland celebrated on the evening of 8 May, Jersey waited in anticipation for their turn.

[Dan Snow]

Well, folks, I'm sure you guessed by now there was no chance that I was going to come to a beautiful island like this, set in the sapphire sea and not get out on the water. And the argument I presented to my producer Mariana is that to really see Jersey properly, get a sense of it and understand its rich history, yeah, you've got to approach it by sea. And that's exactly what we're doing now, folks. A little locally brewed Liberation ale in a little bucket of ice, waiting for the conclusion of this recording. On the morning of 9th May 1919 45, three different ships approached these shores. You've got HMS Bulldog, HMS Beagle and HMS Brissenden. They were Royal Navy ships and they were here to liberate Jersey. The day before 8 May had been VE Day. There have been celebrations across Europe as Germany had surrendered to the Allies. But in Jersey, the mood had been more cautious. The people had had rumors that the war was over, but the island was still under German control. There'd been no liberation here, no Allied landings. There were thousands of German troops on Jersey. They were still armed, still dug into their formidable fortifications. All of the Channel Islands were completely isolated. They had little food or fuel and there was no guarantee at this point the Germans just would leave peacefully. So the next day after VE day, just before 8:00am, two Royal Navy officers, Sub Lieutenant David Mill and Sergeant Lieutenant Ronald McDonald, they landed here in St Hillier and they walked into town at the Palme d' Or Hotel was right on the seafront. That had been a German naval headquarters during the war. The German flag was taken down and the Union flag was hoisted. There were cheers and there were celebrations in the square Below, crowds had gathered. People climbed on lampposts, they waved flags that had been hidden for years. People wept, they embraced children who'd never known anything but occupation. Saw British soldiers in British uniforms for the first time. After five long years, Jersey was finally free. So a Royal Navy ship came in on the 9th.

[Lola Garvin]

Yes. And the Force 135 liberating soldiers were the first soldiers ashore. And of course, they were greeted ecstatically by islanders. People rushed down when they knew that the surrender had been signed. They rushed down to Saint Helier to be part of the celebrations. Church bells were ringing, car horns were being sounded, bicycle bells were ringing. People were gathering and great excitement and exchanging news.

[Michael Billings]

We simply mobbed the soldiers as they.

[Dan Snow]

Came ashore and there was laughter, there was weeping, there was cheering, clapping, embracing, hugging total strangers.

[Captain Michael Billings]

I'm sorry if I get a little.

[Dan Snow]

Bit emotional about it now. I still feel emotional when I think of that day, because it didn't just mean liberation, but also sort of reconnection with the rest of the world because they've just been isolated in this bubble of.

[Lola Garvin]

Yeah. So, I mean, the day itself was a day of mixed emotions. Of course, there was great joy, but a lot of people, because of the isolation of the islands, they'd lost touch with family and friends. They were dependent on Red Cross messages. So there was a huge amount of exchange of information for individuals and then the island authorities themselves. There was an enormous task to be done to get the island back to any feeling of normality. I mean, Force 135, they actually commanded the island for the first 90 days. There was a period of military rule where they brought in supplies. There were lots of practical things they had to do, like rid the island of 65,000 mines, enormous quantities of guns. There were things like bringing in sterling. Islanders had been forced to use German Reichsmarks, so they brought in about half a million pounds worth of sterling in the first few days. There was a huge process of re establishing supplies of food and medicines and clothing. People had had no new clothes for years. Children were walking around in shoes that had been sold with rubber tires and, you know, there was a desperate shortage of lots of daily goods.

[Dan Snow]

And what about the former occupiers, now prisoners? What about the enormous number of Germans?

[Lola Garvin]

Well, by the end of the war, There were about 13,000 German troops on the island. There are some extraordinary pictures of them waiting in queues on the beach in St Oens Bay, which is just in front of the sort of town waiting for ships to take them to the uk, where they were interred in prison of war camps, but a number were held back. About 1,300 German prisoners of war were retained in the island to help with the clear up operation. There were things like hundreds of miles of barbed wire which needed to be removed and for the mine clearance they were also involved in that. The beaches were full of anti tank traps, so that was a priority to clear the harbours, to clear the beaches, to give people access back to the slipways so they could carry on fishing and all the traditional ways of life.

[Dan Snow]

I've seen your German helmets here at the museum. There must have been so much stuff lying around.

[Lola Garvin]

Yeah, a lot of the dangerous stuff like the guns they were assembled and a lot of those were removed from the island and actually dumped at sea in the English Channel in the herds deep, the deepest part. But there were a lot of things like German helmets, kitchen equipment, all kinds of militaria that they just wanted to get rid of. There were a series of tunnels that the Germans had built while they were here. So a lot of this equipment was put into these tunnels and they were sealed up just to get them out of sight and to give people a chance to sort of move on with their lives.

[Dan Snow]

What about people returning from the camps in Europe? There were people trying to make their way back here.

[Lola Garvin]

What's interesting is how long it took people to return home. You kind of imagine after liberation people would be flooding back to the island. But of course the island needed to get the infrastructure in place to manage the return of islanders. There were a whole series of people who had been deported during the war to internment camps and the process of returning them to Jersey took a long time. It's fascinating looking at the diary of Joan Coles, who was one of the internees. She was kept at a camp in Versac in Germany and the camp itself was liberated on 28th April. So we've got in the exhibition on display the manuscript, her original journal. And she's used some which I'm sure were very precious red and blue colour pencils to highlight the fact that they're free and to draw some British and French flags on that page. But then the journal continues and it's weeks and weeks of waiting to hear how they're going to be repatriated.

[Lucy Leighton]

And actually Lola, who we heard from earlier and was also interned at the same camp as a child, remembers their liberation and the long wait to go home.

[Michael Billings]

On 28-4-45, we knew that there was the retreat. So first of all you got the sound of the trucks and the tanks, the German tanks going over the paving stones in the village in one direction and then close after was like 48 hours after. Afterwards, the French troops liberated us, the Free French troops with their colonial forces. There was a French commander who opened the gates and said, vous etes libre, you're free. Which was the most wonderful words that people had heard. And everyone rushed out in front of the castle. And it was amazing. But as a toddler, what I remember. So everyone was celebrating in of front, front. And we went up to these trucks, these army trucks with the French boumiers and the Senegalese and the Moroccans and everything. They were in these lorries and they'd hand us sweets and. And a sandwich. I remember this sandwich. So it was real white bread with a chunk of cold meat in between. And they gave this to us and it was. It was marvelous.

[Dan Snow]

How did you get back to Jersey?

[Michael Billings]

Quite a while, because Jersey wasn't ready for us, of course. Jersey. There were mines. Well, not mines, but there was a lot of artillery and it was in a state. And our houses weren't ready for us because the Germans had put people in our houses. So we were liberated on 28 April. We didn't kind of leave the camp till June, the first week of June. And then we were taken to what became an American military air force base. And we were taken back in alphabetical order by family to the uk, to London, I think, Hendon Airport. We were taken. But Jersey still wasn't ready for us in June. We never got back till September. So we all had to go with family everywhere in the uk. And it was tough because the teenagers were put in schools. And then the rumor had it in the schools that they'd been in Germany. And of course, you imagine the other kids, there was a lot of bullying going on. You know, they come from Germany, so we had a lot. It was difficult.

[Lola Garvin]

You can imagine the frustration of wanting to come home. But also, it's not just a journey of joy, because on that way they go to an airfield in Germany, waiting for an aeroplane to bring them back to England and then on to Jersey. And their paths cross with some French Red Cross flights. And the French Red Cross are bringing the emaciated victims of concentration camps to where they can be cared for in hospitals. The internes paths cross with these flights. And so they see the true horrors of what people have experienced during the war. So again, mixed emotions, joy of coming home, but really seeing the horrors of what people had suffered under Nazi persecution.

[Lucy Leighton]

It's easy to think that once liberation came, everything went back to normal. Eventually the economy got back to its feet. The slave laborers who were brought to the island were repatriated home. Daily life was more or less restored. But the emotional impact on people, the psychological damage that was done was far more long lasting.

[Michael Billings]

We didn't talk about it. I never talked about it at school. It was almost something you had to be ashamed of, that you never mentioned that you'd been in the camp. Yeah.

[Dan Snow]

What effect did it have on your mum and dad's relationship? Your relationship as a family, did it.

[Michael Billings]

Sort of bind you together? No, the family just broke up because my parents health was in a very parlor state. My dad had been a musician. He couldn't play. He was a double bass player. He couldn't play anymore. He was physically a wreck. And my mom was psychologically had problems which went on into my teenage years.

[Dan Snow]

The confinement?

[Michael Billings]

Yes. Yeah. A lot of families broke up because we couldn't get back to normality.

[Dan Snow]

To what do you put down your own success in life and robust mental health?

[Lola Garvin]

What do you think?

[Michael Billings]

I don't know. I think I've got the positivity that runs in my genes. I can tell that and the optimism. And I'm so lucky. I can push bad memories aside and they don't resurface unless I call them back. So I like to think that, you know, everything is going to be all right in the end.

[Dan Snow]

Is it painful to talk about this?

[Michael Billings]

Not now, but it was all those years I was in the same class in secondary school as another girl. And I only found out about five years ago. She'd been in the camp and of course neither of us had spoken about it. Yeah, it was something you weren't proud of. And my mum also is a teacher because she went back to teaching. She never talked about it. At one point she lost her rag, one of her pupils told me, and she threw a book at her and the class said, oh, well, she's been in the camp. As if that was an excuse.

[Dan Snow]

No, but it's good that people received a bit of latitude because they'd been through such trauma.

[Michael Billings]

Yes, that's right, yeah.

[Dan Snow]

Speaking of mixed emotions, what about those islanders who had found an accommodation with the Germans? Perhaps the young women who'd formed relationships with German soldiers or local businesses who'd made money selling to German occupiers? Did those people exist? And if so, how were they treated after the war?

[Lola Garvin]

So after the war there were a few reports of perhaps women being chased down the street by an angry mob. I don't think we had this systematic denouncing of women and tarring and feathering that perhaps we see happening on the continent. But there definitely were these kind of cases. There was a notorious case of a collaborator called Alexandrine Beaudin and her son, and they were well known for collaborating with the Germans, for denouncing neighbors, and they actually turned themselves in to the police for their own safety, and they actually spent nine months in the local prison for their safety before they actually left the island in March 1946. In the end, it was very difficult to. There was lots of rumours and suspicions. It was hard to pin people down. And I think in the end, the island authorities thought, actually, we're a small island or a small community. Having, you know, lots of trials or crimination might not be the healthiest way to return to a sense of. Of normality. And in the end, they decided not to have those investigations, just to sort of move on with life. But, of course, lots of families, those stories are passed on and, you know, those grievances take a long time to diminish.

[Dan Snow]

What's the legacy, do you think? Now, looking back over after 80 years, it was obviously a chapter of great trauma, but now it's really part of your identity, part of the character of this island.

[Lola Garvin]

It's interesting, absolutely. I mean, occupation was the formative experience of islanders during the 20th century. Those stories have been passed down through generations. Every Jersey family will have stories that they were told by grandparents, great grandparents. They will have Red Cross messages, possibly Red Cross parcels, identity cards at home. Those objects are really powerful and have been passed down through the generations and shared more widely with the community. So even islanders today who don't have a long Jersey heritage will be really familiar with the stories because it is so much a part of our island identity.

[Dan Snow]

Well, Liberation Day is coming to an end, at least the formal aspect of it. I think people are going to be partying here. They're going to be hanging out in the squares and in these pubs around here for a few hours to come. And you know what? I might join them. It's been thirsty work. I've been to so many events commemorating the Second World War. None of them have had the urgency that this event here in Jersey has had. This community or these people have an instinctive understanding of what it is like to have lived under tyranny. They know what it is to experience liberation, freedom. They know how to remember it, how to commemorate it. It's been such a fascinating few days to learn about the decisions people had to make here, whether to stay or to go, whether to submit, collaborate, or even those brave people who actively resisted. I know I say this a lot, but I really do recommend coming here to see this place for yourself. These museums and bunkers, all the ones I've been to, are available to explore all year round. You can even stay at the Pom d' or hotel, which, as we mentioned, was the German naval headquarters during the occupation and where the Union flag was raised at the moment of liberation. For more information you can go to the Visit Jersey website, jersey.com and the Jersey Heritage website. A huge thanks to Visit Jersey, Jersey Heritage, the Jersey War Tunnels and if you want to see Jersey's historic sites, I really do recommend booking with Jersey War Tours. Their guides, particularly Phil, are excellent. You can also get out on the water around the island with fishing, Jersey and a big final thank you to Aaron from Leki Bikes for the tandem. If you follow me on Instagram heistoryguy, you'll know what I'm talking about. Honestly, the best way to travel around the island to make a podcast. See you next time folks.

[Michael Billings]

Sam.