Ambassadors will represent us in Biberach
Wednesday 8th February 2012, 2:30PM GMT.
Young Ambassador Amelia Brackley will go to see the camp in Biberach where her great-grandfather was interned. (Picture by Tom Tardif, 1222037)
EIGHT young ambassadors have been chosen to represent the island in Germany.
As part of the new Guernsey Young Ambassadors scheme, a group of students will travel to Biberach to further relations between Guernsey and the town in Germany where several islanders were interned during the Occupation.
Organised by the Guernsey Friends of Biberach and sponsored by Deutsche Bank, the students will spend a week in the town in October. They will visit a secondary school, join in activities with local young people and visit sites, such as the internment camp.
They will also set up a ‘Guernsey stand’ in the town centre to promote the island as a tourist destination.
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This is Guernsey
Guernsey Press
Maybe they shouldn’t mention the Jewish people on Guernsey that Bailiff Victor Carey gleefully sent to their deaths during the occupation.
Under the leadership of Jersey’s former Bailiff, Sir Philip Bailhache, the Jersey examined its wartime conscience and came clean about its wrongdoings during the occupation.
Guernsey has not yet done this, and I think this makes it the last place in Europe(certainly western Europe) to do this.
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‘Gleefully’! Shame on you A J P Taylor
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Go read up on some local history – it’s common knowledge the locals and the States corroborated with the Germans.
Gleefully is the word when it came to deporting these poor people – there are many accounts of the role of Bailiff Victor Carey during the German occupation – none of which paint him in a good light.
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I hope those young people enjoy their stay in Biberach,a beautiful little Town where they will be made most welcome.I think its about time we buried the past,and live for the future,forgive we can,forget we should not.And in case anyone asks,I’m one of those who suffered as much in WW2 as most!
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Well AJP.
Did you expect anything else;
But they did boast about their high awards from the cousins,”
Some of us will never forget.”And rewards of £25 to all who would turn in their fellow Islanders to the then, and for for me still, the ‘Enemy’.
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Why does this article say that ‘several’ islanders were deported to Biberach? Several? 2,200 islanders were deported to civilian internment camps to Germany from the channel islands (and this doesn’t include political prisoners, who were sent to different types of far worse camps). Biberach held about a thousand from the Bailiwick (from memory, without looking in my digital photos of the camp register). A thousand-odd is ever so slightly more than ‘several’. But I’m guessing that the journalist who wrote this didn’t visit my exhibition ‘occupied behind barbed wire’ at Candie In 2010. Never mind: the exhibition opens in jersey at the end of March. But GEP: get your figures straight! You need only ask.
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“Gleefully”
Im with Ray on that one, shame on you AJP. Why dont you do the right thing and retract the word?
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It was indeed gleefully. Victor Carey had only his own self interests to take care of – he couldn’t have cared less what happened to these people he deported.
I’ve got over 100 books, primary sources, academic correspondence, essays on the Guernsey occupation and “gleefully” is more than suitable to use to decribe his role in deporting Jews.
Why don’t you go and take a read at some of the historical documents yourself before you pass judgement on something you know nothing about?
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AJP Taylor
It seems you are the one passing judgement….
Just because ones read the bible does not mean they know what Jesus thought or felt!
Reading all the material you can find and casting your judgement on any facts will not put you in the mind of Victor Carey.
For that reason I think you using the term “gleefully” is inapropriate even if in your opinion he appeared to be or gave the impression of being so !
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AJP Taylor
What about the 700 plus slave labourers worked to death in Alderney death camps? Little seems to be documented about these poor people, do your archives shed any further light on these atrocities?
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Gsyman,
We are talking about the deportation of the Guernsey population.
Alderney were imported european labour, that does not denigrate their plight but is not totally relevent here.
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Yes I agree with you. However I do feel that Guernsey needs to confront the less palatable facets of the German Occupation, as well as restoring fortifications and building bridges with the people of the town by the former internment camp.
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Gsyman!
I think it must be made clear that those deported were all English.
The Germans made the proclamation that it was to save them in case of Attack-
In other words Guernsey people were expendable.
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Whilst those interned at Biberach were prisoners they were at least relatively safe. Had they remained in Guernsey they would still have lost their freedom and been hungry. Had they returned to the mainland they stood a fair chance of dying in the forces or through bombing. I’m all in favour of post-war friendship but I can’t really see why internees are particularly commemorated – they were probably the safest communities anywhere during WW2. The same would apply to all axis internees held in allied camps such as those in the IOM. Compared with the evils of Nazism, internment was the least of it.
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Well beanjar!
If you had heard how some of them spoke to we Islanders, then you might, just might begin to understand how we felt about it all.
So on that note I remember words I heard as a child.
The devil takes care of his own.
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