Lager Norderney facts for kids
Lager Norderney was a Nazi concentration camp on Alderney, in the Channel Islands, named after the East Frisian island of Norderney.
The Germans built four concentration camps on the island, subcamps of the Neuengamme concentration camp (in Hamburg, Germany). Each subcamp was named after one of the Frisian Islands: Lager Norderney at Saye, Lager Borkum at Platte Saline, Lager Sylt near the old telegraph tower at La Foulère and Lager Helgoland, in the northwest corner of the island. 700 people died in the Alderney concentration camps (out of about 6,000 inmates). These were the only Nazi concentration camps on British soil.
It was organised by the Schutzstaffel - SS-Baubrigade I–which was first under supervision of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp; and since mid-February 1943 ran under the Neuengamme camp in northern Germany. It was used by the Nazi Organisation Todt, a forced labour programme, to build bunkers, gun emplacements, air-raid shelters, and concrete fortifications.
Norderney camp housed European (usually Eastern but including Spaniard) and Russian enforced labourers. The prisoners in Lager Norderney and Lager Sylt were slave labourers forced to build the many military fortifications and installations throughout Alderney. Sylt camp held Jewish enforced labourers and was a death camp. The Borkum and Helgoland camps were "volunteer" (Hilfswillige) labour camps and the labourers in those camps were treated harshly but marginally better than the inmates at the Sylt and Norderney camps. Lager Borkum was used for German technicians and volunteers from different countries of Europe. Lager Helgoland was filled with Russian Organisation Todt workers. (For further information on Alderney concentration camps, see Appendix F: Concentration Camps: Endlösung – The Final Solution; Alderney, a Nazi concentration camp on an island Anglo-Norman;.
In 1942, Lager Norderney, containing Russian and Polish POWs, and Lager Sylt, holding Jews, were placed under the control of the SS Hauptsturmführer Max List. Over 700 of the inmates lost their lives before the camps were closed and the remaining inmates transferred to Germany in 1944.
Related pages
- Nazi concentration camp list
- Neuengamme concentration camp subcamp list
- The Holocaust
