Figure behind new evidence on slave labour deaths in Alderney to step down

Lord Eric Pickles has been the UK's Special Envoy on Post-Holocaust issues for the past decade and commissioned the Alderney Expert Review.

The Lord Eric Pickles Expert Review brought certainty over the numbers of slave and forced labourers who were transported to Alderney and who died there of Nazi brutality.

As Special Envoy on Post-Holocaust issues, Lord Pickles decided that it was time to put a stop to the speculation and distortion surrounding the Nazis time on the island:

"I've been all over the world, visited most death camps, talked to survivors and listened to a lot of historians. But I have never come across a place quite like Alderney, where there is a hot dispute about the numbers.

"It's doubly important that where the Holocaust occurred on British soil, that we are absolutely honest, and I took the old fashioned view that the truth can't harm us." 

British Intelligence in 1945 estimated that as many as 389 slave labourers died of brutality, starvation, over work or illness while working to build the German fortifications.

The Expert Review assessed and cross checked all the evidence held in archives as far afield as Israel, the US, Russia and the Channel Islands.

Historians working for Lord Pickles on the Review included Dr Gilly Carr and Dr Caroline Sturdy Colls. Both have extensive experience of working on the Channel Islands, the latter especially on Alderney.

Dr Sturdy Colls found that as many as 7,600 to 7,800 slave labourers from 30 different countries, but the majority from the former USSR, were sent to Alderney between late 1941 and mid 1944. Of those, between 640 and 1,100 perished. The margin is purposely wide to ensure that none who died were omitted but it is agreed that a more likely maximum figure is just more than 1,000.

New research by Dr Carr found that as many as 429 Channel islanders, the majority from Guernsey, and 88 from Jersey, including Gordon Prigent, were sent to Alderney to look after the land or work for the Germans.

Lord Pickles says it is important that those who visit Alderney now are aware of what happened at the former labour and concentration camps:

"An accurate signpost with some accurate points, like you would do in any other part of the world, just to outline where it is. There will be some traces (of bodies there) and people that are walking will want to reflect and show some respect."

The States of Alderney put up signs at the principal camp locations in May 2024 and are working on other ways of marking what happened in the island during World War Two.

Lord Eric Pickles plans to retire in April, as the UK ends its presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.