When the Nazis Occupied a Part of the British Empire

The Smithsonian Channel has announced a new documentary that discusses a brief period in the UK’s history in which part of its territory was occupied by the Nazis.

According to its websites:

“Caroline Sturdy Colls, a world leader in the forensic investigation of Nazi crime scenes, is chasing clues to an unsolved case: a concentration camp that existed on the British island of Alderney. Witnesses and survivors claimed that thousands died there, but only 389 bodies have ever been found. Under heavy restrictions imposed by the local government, which may not want its buried secrets revealed, Colls must uncover the truth using revolutionary techniques and technologies.”

SEE THE TRAILER:

This documentary will explore how many were killed by the Germans when they occupied the island, where they come from, and why they were killed.

You can see the whole schedule of it here.

The Daily Beast notes:

“Six million Jews died in the Holocaust, and yet not a word about them is spoken during Adolf Island, a new documentary special premiering on the Smithsonian Channel (June 23) that investigates the only SS-run concentration camps on British soil—specifically, on the island of Alderney, 60 miles off the south coast of England. According to the program, the men and women rounded up by the Nazis were ‘dissidents and outsiders’ and ‘political opponents,’ but as for Jews, well, they don’t warrant a single mention, even in passing—an omission that epitomizes the speciousness of this hour-long program.

“Adolf Island claims that it wants to uncover long-buried WWII Alderney atrocities in order to pay tribute to the experiences of the slain. However, it goes out of its way to not actually identify the types of people who might have perished on the island. The northernmost of the inhabited Channel Islands, Alderney boasted two work camps, Borkum and Helgoland, plus two concentration camps, Norderney and Sylt. Sylt was operated by the SS—and housed Jews. Regardless, the show only discusses these facilities’ victims in the most general way, even as archival footage depicts gaunt concentration camp inmates. Its narrative-warping silence is all the more striking considering its purported goal, articulated by a Washington, D.C., Holocaust Museum interviewee: to learn more about small concentration camps because ‘one of the things that we really try to do here is bring back people’s identities, humanize them. That they’re not just numbers, but that they’re actual people who had lives.’

“That they did—many of them Jewish lives!—although good luck finding out much about them here. Adolf Island details the work of professor and forensic investigator Caroline Sturdy Colls, whose research previously led to the discovery of mass graves at the Treblinka concentration camp. As Colls explains, Hitler invaded Alderney in 1940 as part of his larger takeover of the Channel Islands, which he planned to fortify as military bases that would help him control the English Channel. Archival footage of German officers having their car doors opened by British police officers certainly proves chilling, as does present-day imagery of the remnants of the German occupation—concrete barrier walls, gun turrets and army barracks—that still pepper the windswept locale’s landscape.”