Lager Norderney was a Nazi concentration camp on Alderney, in the

Channel Islands The Channel Islands ( nrf, Îles d'la Manche; french: îles Anglo-Normandes or ''îles de la Manche'') are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two Crown Dependencies: the Bailiwick of Jersey, ...

, named after the East Frisian island of

Norderney Norderney ( nds, Nördernee) is one of the seven populated East Frisian Islands off the North Sea coast of Germany. The island is , having a total area of about and is therefore Germany's ninth-largest island. Norderney's population amounts ...

. The German

Organisation Todt Organisation Todt (OT; ) was a civil and military engineering organisation in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, named for its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior Nazi. The organisation was responsible for a huge range of engineering pr ...

(OT) built four labour camps in Alderney to house workers for the planned fortifications. ''Lager Norderney'' located at Saye, Lager Borkum off Longis Hill, Lager Sylt near the old telegraph tower at La Foulère and

Lager Helgoland Lager Helgoland was a labour camp on Alderney in the Channel Islands, named after the Frisian Islands, Frisian Island of Heligoland (in German, Helgoland), formerly a Danish and then British possession located off the German North Sea coastline a ...

, situated behind Platte Saline. the control of ''Lager Norderney'' changed from March 1943 to June 1944 when it was run by the Schutzstaffel - SS-Baubrigade and ''Lager Norderney'' became a subcamp of the

Neuengamme concentration camp Neuengamme was a network of Nazi concentration camps in Northern Germany that consisted of the main camp, Neuengamme, and more than 85 satellite camps. Established in 1938 near the village of Neuengamme in the Bergedorf district of Hamburg, th ...

(located in

Hamburg (male), (female) en, Hamburger(s), Hamburgian(s) , timezone1 = Central (CET) , utc_offset1 = +1 , timezone1_DST = Central (CEST) , utc_offset1_DST = +2 , postal ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

Alderney camps

Each Alderney camp was named after one of the

Frisian Islands The Frisian Islands, also known as the Wadden Islands or the Wadden Sea Islands, form an archipelago at the eastern edge of the North Sea in northwestern Europe, stretching from the northwest of the Netherlands through Germany to the west of Denma ...

: ''Lager Norderney'' located at Saye,

at Platte Saline, Lager Sylt near the old telegraph tower at La Foulère and Lager Borkum, situated near the Impot. Two of these camps were the only Nazi concentration camps on

British British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, ...

soil, the other two were labour camps. The labour housed in the camps were used by the OT in a forced labour programme, to supply labour to build

fortifications A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

including

bunker A bunker is a defensive military fortification designed to protect people and valued materials from falling bombs, artillery, or other attacks. Bunkers are almost always underground, in contrast to blockhouses which are mostly above ground. T ...

s, gun emplacements, air-raid shelters and other concrete defensive structures. ''Norderney camp'' housed

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

an (mostly

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

n and other Eastern but including

Spaniard Spaniards, or Spanish people, are a Romance ethnic group native to Spain. Within Spain, there are a number of national and regional ethnic identities that reflect the country's complex history, including a number of different languages, both i ...

) enforced labourers. The prisoners in ''Lager Norderney'' and ''Lager Sylt'' were slave labourers. The ''Borkum'' and ''Helgoland'' camps were "volunteer" (Hilfswillige)

labour camps A labor camp (or labour camp, see spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (espec ...

and the labourers in those camps were treated harshly but better than the inmates at the ''Sylt'' and ''Norderney'' camps. ''Lager Borkum'' was used for German technicians and volunteers from different countries of

. ''Lager Helgoland'' was filled with

workers.

Norderney Camp

The camp was built up by the OT after January 1942 and run by them until in March 1943 when it was handed over to the Schutzstaffel - SS-Baubrigade I—which was first under supervision of the

Sachsenhausen concentration camp Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoner ...

; and ran under the Neuengamme camp in northern

. Some of the structures of Lager Norderney still remain, and the site is now a camping site for tourists. Close by is a tunnel from the camp to the beach, which is it is claimed was used by the Nazis as a shelter, or possibly as a killing site.Solomon Steckoll - "The Alderney Death Camp" - 1982. Over 700 OT workers lost their lives in the island and in shipping traveling to or from Alderney, before the workers were transferred to France to help build the Atlantic Wall. The destruction of Norderney Camp by the Nazis began in March 1942 and the camps were closed after the Normandy invasion in June 1944.

References

{{reflist Nazi German camps on Alderney Subcamps of Neuengamme

Alderney camps

Norderney Camp

See also

References