This year marks the 70 th anniversary of the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands, an anniversary that few in the British Isles are likely to celebrate.
The occupation lasted for five years, from 30 June to 9 May In the final year, after the invasion of Normandy in , the German occupiers β along with the Channel Island citizens β were under siege, locked in a grizzly dance of survival. The pain, hardship and humiliation of those years are difficult for mainlanders to imagine, although the story was a common one across occupied Europe. For this reason it is not a part of the war which fits into the British story of victory, although the notion of the plucky little Channel Islanders has its resonances with the spirit of the blitz.
There was, inevitably, a darker side to the occupation which was, at times, very dark indeed. Accordingly, brothels were set up on the islands, two in Jersey, two in Guernsey and one on Alderney. Little has been written about the women drafted in to service these and other brothels β in all an estimated 34, women in brothels across occupied Europe. Sexual violence was not considered a crime against humanity as defined by the International Military Tribunal in so, unlike other war crimes, the evidence was not collected.
Nor did the women speak out after the war β out of shame or fear, or both. Women suspected of sleeping with the enemy β for whatever reason and under whatever circumstances β were subject to brutal vigilante justice on the continent and in the Channel Islands. As a result, we know very little about these women. Were they voluntary sex workers? Were they coerced? Or were they convicted prostitutes who commuted a prison sentence for service in the Wehrmacht and Organisation Todt brothels?
We know that women were part of involuntary Russian and Ukranian OT workers brought into the Channel Islands in , many of whom, I am guessing, were destined to service the OT brothels. We have no names; British intelligence believed that the Channel Island brothels were evacuated after the Normandy landings in June yet the evacuation reports of Displaced Persons in Jersey and Guernsey in May indicated at least fifty Dutch, Spanish, French, Romanian and Polish women were still there.
