On British Soil:
Victims of Nazi Persecution
in the Channel Islands
A new exhibition at The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide - the world’s oldest archive of material on the Nazi era and the Holocaust - tells the stories of those persecuted in the Channel Islands.
Photos in this article: Wiener Library
During the German occupation of the Channel Islands 1940–1945, many thousands of people were persecuted, including slave labourers, political prisoners and Jews. Their story has been largely omitted from a British narrative of ‘standing alone’ against Nazism and celebrations of British victory over Germany.
From a young Jewish woman living quietly on a farm in Guernsey and later deported to Auschwitz, to a Spanish forced labourer in Alderney, and the story of a man from Guernsey whose death in a German prison camp remained unknown to his family for over 70 years, the exhibition highlights the experiences of the victims of Nazi persecution, and the post-war struggle to obtain recognition of their suffering.
One of the individual stories featured in the exhibition is that of Marianne Grunfeld, who was born in Katowice, Polish city under the Prussian partition, in 1912. She came to England in 1937 to study horticulture and, on completion of her studies in 1939, obtained employment at a farm in Guernsey. As a Jew, Grunfeld was subject to the antisemitic regulations introduced in the Channel Islands during the German occupation. Grunfeld did not, however, register as a Jew with the authorities, as was required after 1940, and may therefore have been denounced.
Despite appeals from her employer, Marianne Grunfeld was deported to St Malo, France on 21 April 1942, along with two Austrian-born Jews, Therese Steiner and Auguste Spitz. Ultimately, the three were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau via Drancy internment camp, arriving on 23 July 1942 where they were murdered. Of their transport of 824 people, only eighteen men and two women survived the war.
The stories of the victims of Nazi persecution in the Channel Islands, such as Marianne Grunfeld, have often been forgotten.
Leah Sidebotham & Dr Barbara Warnock, The Wiener Library