A Day in the Life of a Concentration Camp Prisoner

A Day in the Life of a Concentration Camp Prisoner

Larry Holzwarth - September 27, 2019

A Day in the Life of a Concentration Camp Prisoner
Dutch prisoners were among the “volunteers” sent to concentration camps in the Channel Islands. Wikimedia

21. There were concentration camps on the Channel Island of Alderney

Four camps were built on Alderney, built to hold laborers to erect the fortifications which were part of the defenses which comprised the Atlantic Wall. In 1943 two of the camps became concentration camps run by the SS. The prisoners were mostly Russian and Polish PoWs as well as Jews from throughout the continent. One of the camps, known as Lager Helgoland, housed in addition to laborers identified as volunteers (meaning for the most part they were there to avoid harsher punishment for some miscreant behavior) German technical specialists. The treatment of the prisoners in all of the camps was similar to that of labor camps on the continent.

Prisoners could avail themselves of a brisk black market in the Alderney camps, which extended to their German and French Colonial guards as well. In 1943 a German naval officer discovered a black man (a French Colonial officer) beating a prisoner. The subsequent investigation he ordered revealed that the Commandant of one of the camps, under whom the Colonial officer served, had been engaged in black market activities, obtaining cigarettes, chocolate, and other items from Dutch workers and selling them on the black market. The German officer, Karl Tietz, was given 18 months imprisonment for participating in black market activities.

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