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Many were interned on the Continent. Some were sent to Nazi concentration camps. Now, thanks to the efforts of a Cambridge academic, the stories of individual defiance during the German occupation of Guernsey during World War II can be told

“I knew immediately that this was the single most important resistance archive to emerge from the Channel Islands in many years”

Dr Gilly Carr

It was a hot summer’s day on the island of Guernsey when Cambridge University archaeologist Dr Gilly Carr clicked open the clasp on an old briefcase. She drew out a heap of documents that had not been touched for 45 years. Handwritten and typed as letters and statements, they were personal testimonies of acts of defiance in occupied Guernsey: arrests by the Gestapo and years spent in Nazi prisons and camps.

Today, the Channel Islands are associated with sandy beaches and turquoise seas, but only two generations ago Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark became the only parts of the British Isles to be invaded and occupied during World War II. They were held by the Germans from June 1940 to May 1945, when they were liberated by Allied Forces.

The islands lie 20 miles from the French coast, and the pragmatic decision not to defend them from the advancing German forces was taken by the British government. Some 30,000 Channel Islanders were evacuated to the UK before the invasion, but many people stayed on. They found themselves living with scarce food and fuel, and had to cope with increasing restrictions on their daily lives. 

In the months that followed the arrival of the Germans, many islanders were deported to Germany and German-occupied territories. Some went to civilian internment camps where they were deprived of their liberty but not ill treated. Those who resisted the German occupation of their island went to prisons and concentration camps where they suffered the most appalling treatment.

Resistance to the occupying forces from people living in Guernsey was of a different nature to that elsewhere in Europe: it was unarmed. There were a number of reasons for this: the islanders were outnumbered by the Germans on a scale of three to one; the geography of the islands left little scope for hiding; and many of the adult population were fighting in the British army. Crucially, they received no help from Britain in the way of arms drops or resistance agents.

Subjugation and humiliation

While the stories of European resistance movements have been told countless times, that of the Channel Islands has been largely overlooked. The islanders’ experiences of subjugation, humiliation and dispersal left a legacy of trauma and confusion – and many people felt their voices had not been heard.

When Dr Carr and two colleagues (Dr Louise Willmot from Manchester Metropolitan University and Dr Paul Sanders from ESC Bourgogne in Dijon) flew to Guernsey Airport earlier this year, they were starting work on the research and publication of the first book on the range of protest, defiance and resistance in the Channel Islands during the occupation.

Dr Carr is an expert on the archaeology and heritage of the German occupation of the Channel Islands. Members of her own family were deported, evacuated or imprisoned during the German occupation. “My family come from Guernsey and to be researching what they and others endured in World War II adds an emotional dimension to my work,” she says.

Earlier this year Dr Carr curated an exhibition at Guernsey Museum of arts and crafts made in civilian internment camps by islanders deported during the war. The exhibition – called Occupied Behind Barbed Wire –touched many in the local community. “A lot of people living on Guernsey today are aware of their grandparents’ experiences in the war, perhaps through the odd anecdote, but the exhibition set these personal experiences in a much wider context. Many visitors filled out feedback forms saying how moved they were – and asking whether I would like to look at their family documents,” she explains.

Carr had visited the island countless times in the past but arriving in Guernsey this July, she and her colleagues had no idea that within the space of just a few hours they would hold an archive of its occupation during World War II that had lain unseen in a wardrobe for 45 years.

Although there is no shortage of archives relating to the German occupation of the Channel Islands, it is possible that a significant amount of unpublished and highly valuable material is still in the hands of those who live there. Dr Carr and fellow researchers put out a request in the local paper asking islanders to get in touch if they had anything of value in the attic relating to resistance.

“Might be nothing”

Among those who contacted them was a woman called Sally Falla, who said she had a briefcase that might “be nothing”. Email messages flew back and forth. Eventually they met and Dr Carr was able to take a look at the 200 or so documents inside. “I knew immediately that this was the single most important resistance archive to emerge from the Channel Islands in many years,” she says.

The archive was compiled after the war by Sally’s father, an islander called Frank Falla. A journalist, he ran the Guernsey Underground News Service (GUNS) during the occupation. He and a group of four other islanders secretly kept wireless sets to tune into the BBC. They then wrote up news from the Allied side and distributed it to their fellow islanders.

All GUNS members were eventually caught and taken to prisons on the Continent, where two of them died. Falla survived and returned to Guernsey where, after the war, he became increasingly bitter that his efforts, and those of others like him, had been largely unacknowledged. History has since tended to portray the Channel Islanders either as collaborators or passive victims of the occupation.

In the 1960s, Germany paid the British government a one-off sum so that people who had suffered Nazi persecution in Germany (this is the specific term used in the agreement) could be compensated. Falla compiled statements from people on Guernsey who had been deported. They include descriptions of horrifying physical and mental cruelty meted out by the Germans. Forms were sent off to the British government and the original testimonies were stuffed into a briefcase – where they sat untouched until this summer. 

The archive is among a number of sources still being uncovered by Dr Carr and her colleagues. As well as writing a new history, the three academics hope to compile a definitive list of names so that Guernsey can set up a proper memorial to the resistance. They also plan to create a ‘Resistance Trail’ around the island for visitors.

“In some cases these people were imprisoned quickly and deported, and even families scarcely knew what had happened,” Dr Carr says.

"Even when they came back, there was no formal welcome and their names were never honoured publically, let alone their deeds and the details of what happened to them as a result. Without this archive, the real human consequences of resistance would not just have been forgotten – they would never really have been known about.”

In the 1960s, frustrated by a lack of understanding about the trauma endured by the Guernsey men and women, Falla wrote a book called The Silent War. However, his courage and loyalty were never recognised publically or rewarded during his lifetime. When the book by Dr Carr and her colleagues is published, the Channel Islanders who committed acts of resistance will at last receive the recognition that they deserved.

Published

01 February 2013

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People