BERNHARD WEISS

Interviewer: Did you steal food from the islanders?

Bernhard: No, we didn’t. But we started to steal other things like sugar. Restaurants which were still stocked were confiscated by our army and we helped ourselves on the side.  By February 1944 an order was issued.  Everyone caught stealing would be sentenced to death. We all had to sign it but we continued to steal all the same.

I went stealing a few more times after that.  One time I almost got caught, that’s when I stopped. I had been picking kohlrabi ( German swede) in a greenhouse. It belonged to the infantry next door, when suddenly they were yelling ‘Stop! Who is there! Password!’  I had this little sack with me, almost filled with these swedes by now. I pressed the sack against my face and jumped through the glass wall of the green house, climbed over a wall and was gone by the time they opened fire.

Interviewer: What was the penalty for stealing if you were caught?

Bernhard: Being caught stealing back then meant you were brought before the court in town.  The court would  be in session at around 8.30 or 9.00am in the morning. By the time it was 10.00am you would be shot dead.

The stealing went down eventually, it was too dangerous. People didn’t want to pay with their lives. Life looked pretty grim in any case. I was down to 88 pounds when I became a prisoner of war. I had weight a healthy 140 pounds before. To weigh 88 pounds at the age of nineteen, that’s not a lot.

Interviewer: Did any soldiers report any of this to your officers?

Bernhard: None of us that I know of. But you wouldn’t have known anyway. It was kept secret. And you would be too scared to ask or tell anyone. Maybe we young ones were more afraid of this than the older ones, but I couldn’t say for sure.

Interviewer: What about the officers? Were they also starving?

Bernhard: I take it they had a bit more to eat than we had. Not that we would have seen it. They would dine in their officer’s mess where we were not allowed in.

We were cut off from the mainland in October ‘44 when the allies were on the advance in France. No ships would come in anymore. I couldn’t say for certain, maybe they became slimmer, too. As for my commander, he had alsways been slim anyway.

Interviewer: What about the islanders?

Bernhard: As for the civilians, they were starving, too. I think many cilvilians and German soldiers died of hunger during this time.

Interviewer: Did you steal food from the islanders?

Bernhard: No, you weren’t allowed to steal from the civilians either. That, too, was punished with the death penalty.

Interviewer: How long did this period of starvation last?

Bernhard: We soldiers were starving until the end of the war. For the civilians it started to improve around January 1945. They were being sent parcels via Portugal. I think, 20 pounds per person or was it 20kg, was the allowance, I can’t remember exactly. The civilians were not allowed to share any of the food in the parcels with a  German. I f they got caught giving just one slice of bread to a German their allowance was immediately withdrawn.

Interviewer: Tell us more about these parcels the islanders received.

Bernhard: Yes, they were parcels sent by the Red Cross. The ship came in from Portugal. There was also talk about us soldiers being interned in Portugal. Our commander did not want any more of his soldiers starve to death.  His name was von Schmettow, an aristocrat. He was picked up by an aeroplane one morning and flown back to Germany to be sentenced, I suppose.

The man who informed on our commander was Admiral Hoffmeier, a sea commander. I know that, because all communication was done via the radio. We had a direct line to Berlin.

Interviewer: Did you suspect that Von Schmettow was going to be replaced?

No, he disappeared under mysterious circumstances. His successor was General Wolf. He belonged to the SS not the artillery.

Interviewer: After all these events, did you believe that the war had reached a point of no return?

Bernhard: Yes, most of us did. We didn’t really know what was going to happen to us though. We had nothing left to eat.

End of part 2.

Part 3 of Bernhard’s story will be added soon.

Interview copyright 2001 High Tide Productions Ltd, can be reproduced with permission

BERNHARD WEISS

Bernhard: I am from originally from the area of Schlesigen which became Poland after the war. Before the war I worked on a farm just like my father did. I worked there until I was drafted in 1943.

Interviewer: Thanks Bernhard- please tell us how you ended up in the Channel Islands.

Bernhard: Well, the reason , I ended up in Guernsey is this. After we had completed our training in France we were told that our year (1925) would not be sent to the front line because of the immense losses among the soldiers from the years before us. That’s how I came to be stationed at Guernsey. The older soldiers we replaced at Guernsey were probably sent to the Eastern front.

I didn’t see it, of course. The movement of a battalion within the army was always a matter of secrecy as it could have been read as a sign of weakness by the enemy.  The older soldiers had already left before we arrived there. Well, that was the explanation we were given.

Interviewer: What was the general mood at the time?

Bernhard: I remember everyone being in good spirits. We had arrived there, a whole bunch of us. All young men. The others were old compared to us. Most of them were in their late thirties or early forties. They could have been our fathers. So, it was much more difficult for as young ones to make contact with them.

Interviewer: So you never really mingled with the older soldiers?

Bernhard: That’s exactly how it was. The old ones kept themselves to themselves and so did we. Well, we came in contact with them on the job during the day but our accommodations were separate. As a young person you tend to bond with your peers and most of us already knew each other from training camp, anyway.

We mostly stayed in our quarters in our spare time. I suppose, we could have gone out more but most of the time we preferred to stay inside. It was safer and a lot less hassle. You always had to go through several controls, show your pass etc.

Occasionally we would go into town, to the cinema or down the beach but I wouldn’t say I fully explored the island.

Interviewer:  What kind of crowd was there at the cinema? Did you get to mix with the locals?

Bernhard: No, only Germans were allowed by this point. The best thing about the cinema was the concert organ. It would play before the actual film accompanied by lights and water. This was often much better than the film itself that was to follow. Mainly because of the newsreels they always showed before every film. These newsreels were Nazi party propaganda, as you well know.

Interviewer: You worked in signals during your time on the island. Did you ever hear any of the radio broadcasts being put out by the Allies?

Bernhard: You had access as a radio operator. All you had to do was switch the channels. Which is, what I did and nearly got caught.

Interviewer: What happened?

Bernhard:  I made a mistake. I forgot to switch back the channel. So, this Lieutenant comes in, switches on the radio and hears it.  I tried to convince him that I hadn’t touched it and that it must have happened by accident but the Lieutenant wasn’t convinced.

In the end it took my commander Lieutenant Wolters to bail me out. He did it because, he himself listened in now and then. It was punishable by the death penalty.

I would also like to mention that it was only in the last 6 months of the war that things like this happened. Before that, nobody would have dared to do such things.

Interviewer: Were there many soldiers who did this?

Bernhard: It’s difficult to say. If people did it they would certainly not have talked about it or let somebody else know. It was far too dangerous.

Interviewer: You said your Lieutenant used to listen in too?

Bernhard: Yes, towards the end. In the last six months or so, he would listen in, too.  That’s mainly why we got on so well.

Interviewer: So there were others prepared ot take the chance of being caught?

Bernhard: Well, not in my unit as far as I was aware. I really only knew the first lieutenant and the major. I don’t know whether the major was a loyal follower or not. All I know is that towards the end he was drinking heavily. Drowning his sorrows, I suppose

Interviewer: Do you remember D-Day?

Bernhard: I remember the night of the invasion very clearly. It was a Monday, the 5th of June. We were in session at the command post when I nipped outside to relieve myself. When I looked up I saw the sky was full of airplanes. I went back inside and said jokingly to my commander ‘Looks like tonight will be the night’ but he didn’t reply. We finished at around 11pm that night and by 12am I was back on duty. At 5.30am I received the message that they had landed.  I forgot to mention that I did receive a message before that one. It said ‘Artillery fire and lighting signals are strictly forbidden for all battalions’.

Interviewer: So you were on high alert at this point?

Bernhard: Yes we were. We were on alert the minute they landed. But as I said we couldn’t leave the command post. I went back down to the bunker to try and pick up information via the radio. There was a lot of air traffic going on,  people tried to get information from the main land. Later on we fell under the command of the Navy, and to operate the marine radio was even more difficult.

Interviewer: What was the islanders’ reaction to the invasion?

Bernhard: They kept pretty quiet as they always did.

Interviewer: But you did have contact with the local populace?

Bernhard: Yes, partly. We talked to them.  They rather liked Germans. I never heard a bad word from them.  We organised ourselves a lady who would do our laundry so we men didn’t have to do it. I would take the laundry round her house once a week. I knew they were short of food and we had plenty, so I would take bread with me one week and butter the next.

Interviewer: Did you ever socialise with them in the evening?

Bernhard: Not in pubs. We were not allowed in there, if I remember rightly.  Well, I never went to a pub there. They were friendly. Would greet you and you would greet them back. Some soldiers had girlfriends.  One of them settled down in Sark after the war. He is German, a former member of the occupying force  at Guernsey.

Today, he is an important dignitary of Sark. He was  received by the queen when she came to visit the island a few years ago.

Interviewer: So going back to the D-Day invasion, what happened after the day of the landings?

Bernhard: We were on alert for the next 6 weeks but nothing really happened. So we gradually slipped back into our old routine. Things went back to the way they were until hunger broke out like an illness among us.

At this point we only slept for a few hours at a time. We were on duty for 3 hours in the morning and another two hours in the afternoon. In-between we had strict resting order.  The food would be mainly porridge by now mixed with lots of water, one hundred grams of it, no more than a thick slice and meshed potatoes mixed with water. That’s when we started to steal.

Interviewer: What sort of things did you steal?

Bernhard: The first thing I stole was a Sunday roast for christmas dinner in 1944.  I caught us a cat.

Interviewer: A cat?

Bernhard:Yes, we called the cats “roof rabbits” *laughs*.

End of part 1.

Part 2 of Bernhard’s story can be found here

Interview copyright 2001 High Tide Productions Ltd, can be reproduced with permission

Content coming up includes more interview transcripts including a Captain and Major from 319 Division and the memories of two Islanders who were young children during the Occupation.

Thanks for your patience and we hope that you continue to check out the site to see what’s been added.

BOB LE SOUER

Interviewer: Moving on, you mentioned before this interview a story of some Germans who got stranded off the shore and were unable to be rescued. Please can you tell us more?

Bob: This was a sadly ironic case that happened off the south east coast of Jersey about a little less than a mile off shore called Seymour Tower.

This was manned by 3 Germans who would be relieved after 2 or 3 days and they would walk back at low tide. Shortly after the D-Day landings in France, the Germans put an absolute stop on any fishing boats being launched as they were worried that the fishermen would simply try and escape to the stretch of coast opposite Jersey which had been liberated by the Americans. his was towards the end of July 1944. These 3 men, either they were relieved late or they set off late and they got stranded. They wet up on a high rock- its a very dangerous area, the tide swirls up and can reach heights of over 13 metres. They were seen on top of this rock wearing their jackboots- jackboots are not ideal for swimming in. Some fishermen saw them. Now the Germans may have been their enemies but these fishermen could not stand to see these men drowned in cold blood and they wanted to launch their boats to go and rescue them. There was a young German officer who would not allow them to do so- he refused to make the decision without first clearing it with a superior officer, whom he could not contact fast enough. In a situation like that you cannot afford to dither and they drowned.

The people of that area although they had been bombed- in fact one of the fishermen who wanted to go and rescue them had had his parents killed in an air raid just before the Germans arrived- despite this he still wanted to go and rescue these men but wasn’t able to.

Interviewer: Was it a common thing that the islanders could differentiate between Germans as enemies and Germans as people?

Bob: By and large no. Well people who had contact with Germans, whose work involved working with Germans, occasionally they would say ”Oh he’s a decent chap really“. I think most of us, well in the line of work I was doing I had very minimal contact with the Germans. I did get to know one very well- his name was Karl Grier because he was a hairdresser, Austrian, who had come to Jersey in the 1920s. He was probably the top ladies’ hairdresser in the island. Well within 2 to 3 weeks of the Occupation, they offered him a choice- join up or serve as an interpreter. Well of course, he chose the latter. Eventually he was drafted regardless even though he was in his early 40s. I remember seeing him in the street. I took both of his hands in mine as he was in tears as he didn’t think he’d ever see his wife and children again. He never did see his wife as she later died of TB.

That man was the island chess champion, he was lead violinist in the symphony orchestra, he was completely integrated. Now I think that many people, even if they had known him before, would have found it very difficult to talk to him after that. I couldn’t bring myself to snub him like that and I didn’t care who was looking. But there were many people who felt even if they had known German people before could not bring themselves to talk to them at that time.

A lady I knew had an incident that in retrospect is quite amusing. She like many young girls of the upper or upper-middle classes had been sent to finishing school in Germany in the 1930s. Her German was fluent. She was taken on by the States of Jersey as an official interpreter. She described how one day walking across the central square of St Helier she met Baron Von Heldorf, who was one of the top German brass. He invited her to dinner. She said to him ”In other circumstances Baron, I would have been delighted but you have to understand that wearing that uniform when I have a brother in the British army, it would be quite impossible.“ He said nothing to this but took her hand to kiss it and she said how she stood there frozen looking to either side thinking ”Who is seeing this?“ as she was worried about her reputation.

There were these little incidents, little crises of how to behave because this man may have not been a Nazi, someone who in better times social climbers would have given their eyeteeth to be invited to dinner by! *laughs*

Interviewer: You were saying earlier there as a German soldier who had been given orders to destroy a very important map.

Bob: Yes this is another incident that I remember hearing about long after the war. In the last few days before the Liberation, when it became obvious that we were about to be liberated, this soldier had plans of all the minefields around the coast. His instruction was, which had come down from the commandant who was a rabid Nazi, a very extreme and unpleasant one, to destroy all plans of these minefields. This man was horrified at this idea. He felt that millions of people had died during the conflict and he thought it was crazy that with the war about to end that there could be more deaths as people walked onto these mines. He also felt, and he was right, that the clearing of these mines was something that would be done by German prisoners of war. So instead of destroying these plans he hid them. In his billet where wallpaper was coming away from the wall he hid them. The Liberation came a few days later and he was then desperate to hand these plans over to someone responsible but the first few Ally soldiers he met- his english wasn’t so good- didn’t understand him and told him to go to hell. He got increasingly desperate, finally in time he was able to make contact and hand them over. Nearly all the mines were cleared without a single casualty. The Germans made meticulous records of this sort of thing, which explains why the Commandant wanted them destroyed.

Interviewer: What about the story of the soldiers who were stranded on a tower after the war ended?

Bob: I told you earlier about the soldiers who were drowned at Seymour Tower- well there is another tower about a mile out from my house called Ichou tower. They were not relieved and were getting very fed up. They were getting very hungry eating shellfish and running short of water. Finally they decided to come back even though they had not been instructed to do so. They met an old lady who was gathering winkles and ended up surrendering to her. Its a nice story but it may not be true. I think there was something similar about some soldiers on the Minquiers Reef about 15 miles south of Jersey, which territorially is part of Jersey, who didn’t know the war had ended but I’m not the man to ask about that.

Interviewer: Have you any final stories or comments that you’d like to add before we leave?

Bob: The island has been much criticised by people who were not here for what they think of as collaboration. How do you define collaboration? Can I give an extreme example.

Within 48hrs of the Germans arrival a whole load of orders were published around the islands by the occupying force. One of these was that as of midnight on that day, one would use the right hand road instad of the left. I suppose some purists not on the island would have insisted that we should have carried on driving on the left. Now I don’t know of the most loyal subject of His Majesty King George VI who would have risked riding on a bicycle down the left hand side of the road when possibly confronted by a tank. Were we collaborating by submitting to that law?

There was no manual issued by the British government on how to deal when living inside an occupied territory. Just do the best you can was all they told the inhabitants.

Now the Jewish position I would like to mention as they were much criticised as a notice appeared in the Jersey Post saying that all Jews should register with the Aliens Office, a precursor to the Immigration Office. It was the poor unhappy man who was in charge of that office who had to sign that order. Now I was horrified, I thought they were going too far. I didn’t know the inside story- it was this woman who was being employed as an interpreter who told me. They had got this instruction from the Field Commandant that they wanted a list of Jews and they were told:

”We don’t have a list of Jews, we don’t go around asking people their religious persuasion“.

They replied ”Oh but you must know of Jews“.

“Well, they would have known a few but the Jersey Jewish population would have known what was happening in Germany before the war and if they had any sense, they were told this, would have got out before the Islands were invaded. As far as we know they all did, we don’t know of any still here“

So the reply from the feldkommandantur was that in that case there was no reason not to print the notice as they had nothing to worry about. They were told that this was an order from Paris, which would have meant straight from Berlin. The local administration knew well that if they were too difficult with the Germans in the local feldkommandantur they would be replaced by ones who would be much more difficult to deal with such as the SS. They really didn’t think that there were any Jews left in the island and if there were they assumed that they would be sensible enough to ignore it.

However, some didn’t. They were told ”What are you doing here? We haven’t seen you, get away“. But their response was that it was an order- most people are law-abiding, they were worried that if it was found out that they would lose their property and so they registered. Nothing happened to the Jersey Jews who registered ultimately. There was one who was Romanian and was deported after Romania entered the war in 1941 but he survived. But there was nothing that the Jersey administration could do to prevent the Germans from being deported if they wanted that to happen.

There were three women who were deported from Guernsey, but again there was nothing they could have done to prevent this. They were held German passports and therefore had no-one who could step in on their behalf.

You can see how seeing a notice like that horrified people, it horrified me, even though none of us knew the whole story. I think that the local authorities did an extraordinary job. Letters have been found to the feldkommandantur saying ”Dear Sir“ and ”Yours faithfully“ which is seen as dreadful collaboration. Well that is how letters are written! Is that collaboration? Would it have been better if they started ”You bastard“, would that have helped anyone?

Interviewer: So you are saying that historical documents should be taken in their context.

Bob: Yes, definitely.

Don’t get me wrong- there was collaboration. There were people who acted as agents for recruiting labour, who used their trucks to help carry building supplies- people who profited from helping the Occupation force. That kind of thing.

There was one German for every three islanders, so you never could have had armed resistance like you did in France and I think one person in 20 actually went to prison, now that was men women and children. I’m sure for every person who went to prison there were probably 10 who didn’t so everyone was crossing the Germans somehow. It was just a case of not being caught.

Interview copyright 2001 High Tide Productions Ltd, can be reproduced with permission

BOB LE SOUER

Interviewer: What were the risks involved in helping the workers escape?

Bob: Well quite considerable, I told you earlier about the old lady who ended up in a gas chamber, although that was I think extreme. Normally that would not have happened. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison initially, but if you had a sentence of more than a certain length of time, you didn’t do it in the islands but were sent to France. But after the Allies landed Normandy, the whole system collapsed and prisoners were moved around from one place to another and many got lost in the system.

Interviewer: How would you make sure that these forced labourers were kept hidden?

Bob: Well there’s no real easy answer to that! It varied from person to person. One particular chap who I got to know very well was being hidden in a flat in St Helier (Jersey’s main town), which was much better cover than being in a detached house in the country. Blocks of flats tend to be very impersonal. You might see a name on a bellpush at the front door but people in flats scarely know each other. I think this happens everywhere. You would get much less contact than say a lane like I live in, where I know all my neighbours and they know me, and they probably know things about me I don’t even know they know! This can be too much. A block of flats is much more private.

Anyway, this fellow had acquired a long rain coat, a hat with a trilby brim and a pair of spectacles with plain glass and he would walk out in this gear in the height of summer. I always thought this was dangerous because everybody would look at him and think ”Who is this fellow dressed like that in summer“- he looked like a failed Chicago gangster- but he was never caught!

Interviewer: How much fear did you have that you would be caught?

Bob: *pauses* Well I’m not sure I really thought about it. You took every precaution you could possibly take and one learned never to tell anybody anything unless that person had to know. You never dropped a name- you never said ”He’s present with some people called Smith and they are living at the top of such and such hill and they think that the milkman suspects that someone is staying there etc“ You would never say anything like that.

Interviewer: Were there any occasions when you came close to being caught?

Bob: No, not as far as I know. There were amusing incidents though. The Russian who was living in this block of flats… we had parties. We had parties for all sorts of reasons. You’d take along your own food, which would generally be miserable little cakes made from oatmeal and the liquor tended to be calvados, which is distilled cider. Calvados on empty stomachs tends to make a party go!

Anyway, it was a warm September evening and the windows were up. Suddenly this Russian got down on his haunches, folded his arms and started thrusting his legs in and out and singing at the top of his voice, doing a Cossack dance to a Russian song. I can still remember the reflex action of people turning round and slamming shut the windows as there was a platoon of Germans marching in the street outside! *laughs*

Interviewer: Were any of the escaped Russians recaptured? Did any of them escape from the islands?

Bob: Some were captured. None escaped to France, which a number of people were doing in the last few months of the Occupation, young men got over with the intention of joining up with the Allies.

I did know of one case where a Russian was desperate to go with one group and they refused him as had they been caught with an escaped POW in their midst they could have been shot. Under international law, he would have been re-imprisoned, they could have been shot.

Those who survived to the Liberation, may of them came to a very sticky fate. They were not welcomed back with open arms by their government. They had been in touch with people in the West and they were therefore very suspect. Many of them ended up in a Gulag and probably died there.

One man I knew was kept under KGB surveillance for 20 years until he was able to convince them that his story was genuine! The Russians had a very simple rule for people in the armed forces: there are no prisoners of war. They did not subscribe to the international Red Cross. You keep one bullet for yourself and if you don’t well God help you, because we won’t! So there was no international neutral supervision of POW camps in which Russian prisoners were kept, unlike other nations, which was one of the reasons they were so appalling badly treated. The thing is most of the people who were here were not even military prisoners but just people who had been picked up in the street.

Interviewer: Can you tell us more about the parties that you had with the Russians?

Bob: There were a few, often they would be all night parties as the curfew was at nine o’clock and your only transport was a bicycle- all of which late in the Occupation had hosepipe tyres- so when the festivities were over you would bed down on mattresses or on the floor for the night.

We had parties for all sorts of reasons: birthdays, gatherings. We had parties on very special occasions such as the last day of gas or the last day of electricity. Of course this made sense as it was the last time you’d be able to warm anything up or the last time you’d have any light unless you were lucky enough to still own a guttering candle.

I know in the last few months in my parents home a light was a medicine bottle filled with diesel oil- where the oil had come from I don’t know, it must have been a German source, which would have been bartered for an egg, which would have been bartered for something else until it reached us- using a boot lace for a wick. If you walked too quickly across the room it went out. My father would get very mad if that happened as we were down to our last box of matches. Its very difficult to imagine a situation these days a time when you cannot replace anything unless you have something spare that could barter.

I digress. Well, two friends of mine were young men who were both conscientious objectors- they would never have picked up a rifle to kill a man but they were both idealistic and willing to save lives. They were hiding this Russian and initially sharing their rations with him, until I managed to get hold of an ID card through a friend of mine who worked at the food station. A photo of the Russian was was very skilfully inserted into this card and with this he was able to get a ration card from that point on. This was the same person who did the Cossack dance at the party that September afternoon.

Interviewer: Did the Germans know that private parties were going on and were they OK with letting this happen?

Bob: Oh yes they would never have interfered with them. There was a great deal of entertainment self-organised. I think there always has been a certain amount of talent within the Islands which found expression in concerts- some were not so good, some excellent- and in plays.

The opera house in Jersey would have one week for German films and one week for local plays. They were always full. As everyone was riding round on these hosepipe tyres the performances had to finish early to give people time to get home before curfew but they were always a sell out. It was an extraordinary lively period of creativity for the local community- we were rarely bored, people always thought of ways to try and entertain themselves. The plays had to be submitted to the censors who sometimes, excellent though their English might have been, failed to spot certain things which could have double meanings.

Read part 3 of this interview where Bob talks about further stories of the Occupation and collaboration.

Interview copyright 2001 High Tide Productions Ltd, can be reproduced with permission

Part two of this interview will be published shortly.

BOB LE SOUER

Bob: My name is Bob Le Souer, a very Jersey name!

During the Occupation I was very young, I was 19 when the Occupation began and I was working in the local office of an insurance company.

Interviewer: Can you expain a little bit about how business was affected by the Occupation

Bob: Well it had to adapt. People attempted to carry on- there is a kind of deep sense of force of habit and routine when times are very difficult and I’ve seen this in other parts of the world when travelling, when there’s been a crisis of some sort. They pretend that everything is normal, they feel safer trying as far as they can to go along with their usual routine and that happened here (Jersey).

Interviewer: Something we were told in an earlier interview was interesting. The interviewee suggested that this attempt to act normally changed significantly after the deportations of the Islanders began. Was this how you saw it?

Bob: There was a change in attitude after September in 1942. It had been, well one would never say it was a pleasurable Occupation, but it was endurable. Things were getting worse, rations were steadily getting lower, the Russian workers came in and there was great uncertainty as at that time. No-one could predict which way the war was going but certainly after the deportations there was a totally different mindset. From that time on there was an attitude of burning hate and an attitude by everybody to be as awkward as possible from that moment on, which hadn’t existed to such a degree before.

Even on the day the first deportees were leaving on a little boat going out through the harbour mouth, people were grouped up on the hill. The people going out started singing “There’ll always be an England” which was then picked up by the group on the hill. Now that sort of thing hadn’t happened before- this was open defiance. There was a minor riot, young boys were striking German officers no less and were put in prison for it- that sort of thing. That defiance was caused by tremendous anger and afterwards although that anger was perhaps more subdued, it was always there.

Interviewer: The decision to deport people seems to be a very odd one at that point of the war when the islands were so firmly in their control. How did the German administration respond to the acts of defiance?

Bob: They responded in the only way they possibly could. We learned later on that this move had been strongly opposed by the German administration for some time because they knew perfectly well that it was going to make life more difficult for them afterwards. They were not responsible for the decision- the orders had come from Paris and were in fact from the Fuehrer himself. Yes obviously for them it made things much more difficult for them on an individual basis and they didn’t therefore want it.

Interviewer: Please can you now tell us about how you were involved in trying to hide the Russian slave workers who were brought into the island by Organisation Todt?

Bob: Yes, I became involved… it was something that evolved into my life rather than a sudden change or decision.I was working in insurance and used to travel around to houses to collect premiums and doing this I got to know a truly remarkable widow who used to live in the north west of the island. She had a young man living in the house who was introduced as being French. However I knew from the way he spoke French that he did not speak it as a Frenchman would. I said nothing but I suspected.

The next time I called at the house she admitted to me that he was Russian. She had two sons who were both in the armed forces. The elder son who was a graduate of Oxford University… both very bright, both had scholarships to Oxford. The eldest graduated in 1929, enrolled in the Navy and very quickly became an officer. One day she got a Red Cross message- Red Cross messages were 25 words maximum- and this message told her that her eldest son Richard had been lost at sea in the Mediterranean.

Two or three weeks after that a neighbouring farmer came to her door with this Russian… he too was a remarkable man. He was trying to place escaped prisoners with local families. Her words to me that I shall never forget were “I had to do something for another mother’s son”. She, for her pains, finally ended up in a gas chamber at Ravensbrook but that’s another story…

Eventually there came a time when he had to be moved and she was arrested a few days later. By that time I knew of other Russians who were being hidden and somehow was part of this small group helping them. You didn’t know anybody else’s names, there was no organisation- you couldn’t talk about these things, that was far too dangerous and all the prisoners would have to be moved after a time. I mean imagine if in this house you had one hidden, the neighbours would see. They would see this strange person going in and out and would say, “well, who can that be?” So the moment the neighbours began to get curious- well they wouldn’t go running to the Germans- they could just talk loosely so the workers had to be constantly moved.

Interviewer: Can you tell us more about the workers themselves?

Bob: Well they had been brought from Russia in appaling conditions, in cattle trucks across Europe, the journey taking perhaps 2 weeks. In many cases they were simply picked up in the street. I knew a boy of 15 who had been going home from school in Kiev, I think many of them came from the Ukraine, which was at that time part of the Soviet Union. He was on his way home from school wearing his school cap, carrying his school books and with his friends. They were suddenly aware that there were German trucks at the top of the street, and German trucks behind them. Able-bodied men were being thrown into the trucks. Quick thinking men sashed into buildings, possibly got out of the back but these boys were simply picked up, taken straight to the railway station, put in a cattle truck- so many of them that there wasn’t even room for them to sit or squat- and came across Europe. I leave you to imagine the sanitary conditions in those cattle trucks in the height of summer.

Interviewer: What was their main task when they arrived in the Islands?

Bob: Building fortifications for the quasi-civilian German organisation under a Doctor Todt, called Organisation Todt. The Russians were regarded by the Nazis as ‘untermenchun’, meaning ‘low people’. They were immensely racist, as racist or worse than the very worst kind of Afrikaan in South Africa during Apartheid, not only against coloured people but against Slavs for some reason, and particularly if they came from Russia.

Interviewer: Can you now tell me something about their living conditions when they reached the Islands?

Bob: Well they were working very long hours. They were not paid of course. They were not allowed out of their camps. Others groups were- there were a lot of Spanish Republicans. They were paid in the rather worthless Reichmarks but these could be used in the islands, but the Russians were not paid at all. They were also very badly fed.

The badly fed was not actually the German government’s policy. I got to know very well a Spaniard, who was a lawyer in his civilian life in Spain, and because he was educated he was working in an office. He told me that on paper the rations that the Russians were supposed to be getting were really quite good. It was all worked out by a specialist dietitian in Berlin who had calculated the requirements to get a good day’s work out of a man. The trouble was Nazi Germany, like I think all dictatorships, was quite incredibly corrupt. This was a surprise to me. I knew that Nazi Germany was brutal, even before the war. We knew how they were treating Jews. They weren’t sending them to death camps at that point but they were denying them certain ordinary civil rights. People at that point thought “Yes but they get things done” and they’re building autobahns and suchlike“ but in fact it was very corrupt. Dictatorships are not efficient! So what was happening was that these rations were getting piched along the transit route and in the islands by guards who were then selling them on the black market. That’s why they were just getting watery soup, resulting in a high death rate for quite a long time until the German Red Cross intervened and their conditions were improved. At that point some of the more infamous camp commandants in Jersey were replaced. It seems even the most inefficient and brutal of regimes doesn’t want to see its labour just dying off like that!

Interviewer: Was it the conditions that led to many of the workers trying to escape?

Bob: Well, they were obviously unhappy being forced to help out with building fortifications anyway in order to help the German war effort, but I think that the appalling conditions was a very strong reason why many of them sought to escape yes.

Interviewer: With conditions being that bad there must have been an awareness of this amongst the islanders.

Bob: Oh yes, I mean we had very small bread rations and so on ourselves but people would share these when possible. They would go to near the work sites and attempt to throw them the odd piece of bread. My God, if you were caught you were imprisoned immediately for it! A couple I knew, my dentist and his wife, they were passing food to the Russians one day on a building site, got seen arrested and were deported. They spent the rest of the war imprisoned. They were not sent to interment camps but were sentenced and imprisoned and sent to prisons on the continent. Both survived the war, miraculously

Interviewer: Were there any instances where German soldiers were sharing their rations with prisoners?

Bob: No I don’t, it must have happened but I didn’t see it myself. Well one thing, there is a photograph that Michael Ginns (head of the Channel Islands Occupation Society) has showing a group of Russian workers, some of them only boys, and a German soldier had written on the back ”A group of Russian workers. Poor fellows.“, which shows that there was an awareness or maybe sympathy to their plight but I don’t think any soldier would have dared stick their neck out by actively helping them.

Part 2 of this interview is now available to read and continues the look at the lives of the Russian workers and those who helped to rescue and hide them.

Interview copyright 2001 High Tide Productions Ltd, can be reproduced with permission

This interview was conducted in August 2001 as part of the filming for In Toni’s Footsteps: The Channel Islands Occupation Remembered.

This is part two of the interview. Part one was published on May 6th 2008.

ARTUR BOCH

Interviewer: After the invasion had happened you would have had no contact with your family. Were you worried about them?

Artur: Well, yes, because I was born in a little village with about five hundred souls and the front came closer every day. They were already in Germany at this point and we were worried about the future. Our house, I found out much later, was right beside an important cross road for the army. They moved their troops through there. So it was a target. And our house was hit by a granade one day. Luckily, my father had just gone out when, literally a few seconds later, this granade dropped on our house and went straight into my parent’s bed room.

My father was so lucky he was missed. They later did up the bed room again.

Interviewer: We’ll speak about passing your time now. Did you ever visit the local cinema in St Peter Port?

Artur: Sure, it was great, especially the live music from the organist. I mean, I must say, I’m from a small village myself. The nearest town was some eleven km away. That’s where they had cinemas too. Not that I had never been there. I mean, it’s not like today. In those days if you wanted to go into town you had to either get on a bike or to the nearest train station, which was some 3km away, in Zelle. You know it?

Well, there is something else I remember now, talking about the cinema. I was seventeen and a half when I was drafted. We youth, we had to be off the streets by 9pm. We were not allowed on the streets after 9pm. I was already a recruit by that time - we are talking August ‘42 - and expected to be drafted by February ‘43.

So, here we were, one night in August ‘42, it was about half past nine or a quarter to ten, getting dark but not yet completely. I was out on the streets with my mates riding bikes, when the police came. Me and a mate, the two of us couldn’t get away quick enough. We had blocked each others way with our bikes. The others got away in time but we got caught by the police.

I had to appear before the magistrate the next day because of it.

Just imagine, I got a weekend in the nick for that but was considered old enough to go out and die for my country only some three months later.

Great, really. Makes a lot of sense. I am not allowed on the streets after 9pm, or to the cinema but I am allowed to go out and die for my country some three months later.

Interviewer: We’ve heard people talk about sports events such as football where islanders and German soldiers would play against each other? Did you see anything like this?

Artur: Well, there were some guys from our unit, they played there and I’m sure they had these local matches, too. You know, one unit against another, nothing special.

Well, the civilians, of course they had their own teams, too. They had two teams, mixed teams, men and women. I had never heard of such a thing before, let alone seen it. Men and women playing together in one team. It was quite fun to watch. It was in St Peter Port on the playing field. Nice field, Cambridge Park I seem to remember.

Interviewer: Was there much in the way of contact between the islanders and the German soldiers at public events such as this?

Artur: Yes, among the players, I am sure. But for us onlookers, well, no. You see, I had arrived there after everyone else and also, I didn’t speak English. Maybe it would have been different if I had spoken English but I didn’t and so I hardly had any contact with the civilians at all. Only when I went shopping, to Woolworth for needles and thread or for socks or stationary.

Interviewer: There is a lot of accusations thrown around about collaboration and whether island girls were liaising with German soldiers. Did you experience this at all?

Artur: I, personally, didn’t have any contact with anyone but you saw it happen all the time.

People told you about it especially later in captivity. They told you about the contact they had made with girls, or families, or a lady to do their laundry. I think, all the sergeants had a lady who would do their laundry. Yes, that’s how it was.

And in St Peter Port on the beach, yes, there I remember seeing some of us flirt with girls.

Interviewer: Let’s now discuss your experiences after the invasion. Did you manage to get through the war on rations or were you affected by the starvation that plagued the islands?

Artur: No. When the hunger period started we looked for anything to eat. Anything. There were stinging nettles everywhere. You wouldn’t help yourself from the fields. It was punished by death penalty, as I mentioned before. One person got sentenced because he nicked cauliflowers.

Cauliflower leaves was a delicacy. We would cook it by itself, boil sea water first, to extract some salt. To boil water was an act in itself. You needed to find wood to make a fire with in the first place and so on. It was all rather complicated.

I mainly had nettles, if I could get my hands on them or mussels, sea mussels, boiled with a bit of salt. No cooking recipes needed there. And tomatoes, of course. There were so many tomatoes on this Island!

When we first arrived we had tomato soup every single day. Tomatoes were big export business on the island before the war. Mainly to France. Invasion put a stop to it. Later they were thrown into the sea, truck loads of them. I saw it myself. How they threw a truck load of tomatoes into the sea, because of the huge surplus.

And this despite the fact the troops ate a lot of tomatoes because we were always hungry. There were a lot of restaurants on the island too before food became scarce.

Interviewer: Many reports from that time indicate that the soldiers became so desperate for food that theft became a big problem. How did this affect the troops? Did you experience this?

Artur: Well, stealing from comrades, stealing anything from anyone, stealing as such was punished by death penalty. If you were caught you got shot or threatened to be shot. There was this guy from the unit next to mine, a father of four. He nicked two cauliflowers and got sentenced to death.

They picked a few from our unit, too when they put the execution command together. You know, you have to exercise that before hand, the different commands like ‘aim’ and ‘fire’ etc.

The guys they picked for this command were all guys who had been a bit rebellious, you know, a bit out of line.

Anyway, they were already exercising the commands but in the end the sentence was never carried out. A day before the sentence was due, the war ended so that was the end of the sentence, too.

Well, that’s all I know about the death penalty for theft. Whether somebody else got shot somewhere else for it, I couldn’t say. I only know of this one incident. The one I just told you.

Interview copyright 2001 High Tide Productions Ltd, can be reproduced with permission

This passage concerns Marlene Zimmer, a clerk for the Aliens Office who goes into hiding when Clifford Orange, the Chief Aliens Officer for Jersey, asks her to register as a Jew because of her deceased Jewish father. She flees St. Helier, winding up hiding in St. Brelade with Claude Cahun (Lucille Schwob) and Marcel Moore (Suzanne Malherbe), the Surrealist-artists-turned-Resistance propagandists (They signed their propaganda leaflets “The Nameless Soldier”).

War On The Margins:
“Thank God for the wireless. They listened to BBC (”the Beeb”) and the powerfully intrusive German stations sporadically during the day; often Lucille would take notes on the nine o’clock BBC news broadcast and, with Suzanne’s illustrations, turn these into missives from the Nameless Soldier. They liked to think the recent rumors of multiple desertions were due, in part, to their efforts. More Orders against the Jews had appeared, spelling out the means by which proceeds from terminated Jewish businesses were to be handled. Since the local government that had been her place of employment was now the agent of her persecution, she [Marlene] had become a regular news listener. They wanted to turn her in to the Nazis; they might even be looking for her actively. Her coworkers had become jerrybags and informers. The fact of a Jewish father, formerly just a curiosity, was now a dangerous secret. Lucille and Suzanne, Mary Drummond, and the wireless were her new family. She had gotten to know the news readers; they now often introduced themselves before reading the report in order to prevent impostors from passing on propaganda.

Alvar Liddell, Bruce Belfridge, Frederick Grisewood, and Godfrey Talbot were cousins who came to her home bearing news that they wanted her to hear from their own lips. They pulled no punches, but they never went to pieces. They did not lecture or condescend like Haw-Haw, who would be more
depressing if he didn’t sound so pompous. Haw-Haw was the tippling uncle on German Overseas Radio whom everyone made lame jokes about. Churchill, though his speech often sounded somewhat slurred, was a more beloved uncle whose faults were overlooked in the face of his unrelenting optimism and eloquence. Although Mr. Orange had been an example of an untrustworthy authority figure, she couldn’t bring herself to think the same about Churchill; it made her nauseous with fear. What if all of them were in on it? What if Churchill was making the “V” sign with one hand and taking Reichsmarks with the other? She shivered and quickly argued the thought away before it drew tears.

With a history book with maps borrowed from Lucille and Suzanne’s vast library, she began sorting out the different locations mentioned on the wireless: Tunis, Berlin, Kiev, Singapore. She wanted to put a map of the world on the wall and put pins in locations where war was being waged; she wanted to put a big pin on Jersey, where she lived. Maybe she should just put a pin in her heart, to locate her on the map of suffering which unfolded almost worldwide. It became the world itself, really, and not a map. She was just a pin, a dot. She could put nothing on her heart, especially not a monogram. She could be taking her life in her hands if she wore a monogrammed sweater; the thought made her chuckle.

They sat in the living room after a Sunday dinner of bread and swedes, sipping wine. They had managed to scrounge enough wood for a small fire, so each woman needed only a single shawl to ward off the chill. They switched on the wireless at nine to listen to the news. Alvar Liddell came on and began announcing a surprise attack by Japan on a place in the Pacific belonging to the United States, Pearl Harbor. Marlene had never heard of Pearl Harbor; she looked toward Suzanne and Lucille, who were listening intently with unreadable expressions. When Liddell had finished, they looked at each other. “This is bad for America,” said Suzanne, “but I think it is good for Europe. I think America will join the war now; they will defeat the Germans.”

Lucille interjected, “But, cherie, America has always been averse to this war. They want nothing to do with our problems; they are capitalist.”

“True, Lucille, but they to some extent incited this. They cut off Japan’s oil supply. Surely they knew that would lead to something.”

“I suppose. But they still have to decide to enter the war.”

“Yes; well, time will tell.”

“This is a good opportunity, though, for that letter to the jerries we were planning: ‘Hitler leads us.’”

Suzanne, smiling, took it up: “‘Goebbels speaks for us. Goering eats for us.’”

“‘Himmler…Himmler murders for us.’”

“‘But nobody dies for us!’”

For more information and reader reviews, please look at the Amazon page for War On The Margins.

This interview was conducted in August 2001 as part of the filming for In Toni’s Footsteps: The Channel Islands Occupation Remembered.

This is part one of the interview. Part two will be published separately.

ARTUR BOCH

Artur: My name is Boch. I was seventeen and a half when I was drafted. We first came to Holland where we were trained. We came to Guernsey in October. We went by train to the coast. I can’t remember how long exactly the journey was. We first went to St Malo and at night got on a ship to Guernsey. We arrived in Guernsey during the night and marched all the way to Fort George where we were stationed. We were a bicycle squadron. The squadron had been cavalry but was changed to bikes.

Well, the next day we looked down, it was a wonderful view. I hadn’t seen much of the island until then, that came later. St Peter Port was not so far away from Fort George, maybe 2 km. We arrived there as young recruits, were trained for another 4 weeks and then brought together with the older soldiers

Interviewer: There were a lot of soldiers already posted in the Islands when you arrived. How did you find they were towards you, being so young when you arrived?

Artur: Well, they were all old hands. It was difficult for us young ones to get on with them. There were also a number of casulties from the Eastern front. They were brought to the island for recovery and then went back again. I was always scared they’d send me there, too.

Interviewer: Was this a common worry amongst young soldiers such as yourself?

Artur: I couldn’t say, I remember, one time, no, I couldn’t say.

They always sent the ones they didn’t like, the ones who had been unruly or rebellious. They sent them first. I kept telling myself ‘keep your head down, keep your head down.’ Later on, the invasion put an end to it since we couldn’t get away from the island anymore. A few days into the invasion when the allies landed in France, they were looking for volunteers for Cherbourg. The base had been cut off and they tried to get supplies in there on minesweepers. The volunteers were to be taken there at night in a minesweeper. They needed volunteers for that. I thought to myself if you volunteer they’ll probably take you, if you don’t, they will because you didn’t volunteer. Which is exactly what happened. I volunteered, hoping they wouldn’t take me. And they didn’t. They took the ones who hadn’t volunteered, branded them cowards.

I was lucky. My officer said to me ‘I can’t dispense with you, you are my dispatcher’. I was so relieved when I heard his words because I knew they’d be cannon fodder, the ones who had to go there. I was so relieved when I heard his words.

So, this is how I got to stay on the island. Three days into the invasion a Nazi party officer gave as a speech. He said, ‘The allies only landed, right? Let them all come in, so we can push them out, all at once.’ Yeah, right, bollocks. After that the hard times really kicked in, with the starving and all that. Our island commander, General von Schmettow was replaced around Christmas.

I would like to mention something else. During this time, pioneers went over to St Malo on minesweepers to get us fresh supplies. We didn’t have anything left. No coals, no leather. You see, we nailed wooden soles to our leather boots because there was no sole leather left either. We felt like storks walking on these wooden soles. And the vehicles were switched to ‘wood gas’ because there was no petrol left. A small wood-burning stove was attached to the vehicle and it run. Don’t ask me how.

Interviewer: I’ve not heard about these runs to St Malo, please can you tell us more about that?

Artur: Well, it was a small unit. They were given a proper dinner that night and then sent over to St Malo to capture a coal ship. And they did. They also caught a few prisoners. I don’t know if it was true but rumour had it that they had also captured a British major. The rumour went that General von Schmettow got in touch with the British through this captured major to see if he could get us all interned in Portugal. The general didn’t want any more of his soldiers to starve to death. Even the doctors in the sick bay had finally refused to take any further responsibilities for anyone’s life. And then one of these Nazi officers informed on our general. An admiral from the navy immediately replaced the general. This admiral said to us ‘We will never give up the islands, even if it means we have to share one tin of sardines among ten men.’

Interviewer: At the start of the war when the islands were taken, the German Army confidently believed in their victory. As the tide of the war was turning, how did this affect soldiers’ morale in the islands?

Artur: Well, I had my first leave in February 1944. That was before the invasion. When I came back from this leave I had stopped believing in our victory. We knew there was going to be an invasion. We just didn’t know where and when. We always thought it would be in Calais, certainly not the Normandy. I remember thinking, you will become a prisoner of war and end up wood chopping in Canada until the end of your life. That’s what they’d told us would happen if you become a prisoner of war, or you die. I had very little hope, of ever getting back home again.

We had lost at Stalingrad, Rommel had come back from Africa and I think, they had already landed in Sicily, too. And from they Eastern front they kept reporting ‘line adjustment, line adjustment’. I had little hope left.

Interviewer: Can you tell us more about General Von Schmettow?

Artur: I didn’t know him personally. I only knew what went round. He was an army general. The one who replaced him, Hoffmeier, was a war marine general. And a Nazi, I think. The way he talked.

Interviewer: What made you think that?

Artur: Well, because he always insisted that we will never give up the Islands. When the allies marched into France we were told that it was vital to keep the Islands because they were British and may come in handy, if negotiations were to become necessary, should the table turn, one day. That’s why we had to hold out till the end and starve.

Interviewer: And Von Schmettow wouldn’t have ordered that? What would he have done should things have got to that stage?

Artur: Well, given up the island, I suppose, or negotiated a deal. And we would have been interned in Portugal. Yes, we would have gone to Portugal.

Interviewer: What communication did you have with home after the invasion of Normandy?

Artur: I had my last letter from home in October 1944. Aeroplanes didn’t get through to us anymore. They let us send messages back home on the transmitters. You know, short ones, just your name and that you were well. After that, I wrote my first postcard back home in June or July 1945 when I was already a prisoner of war. The last news my family had received from me before that was a telegram back at Christmas in 1944.

Interviewer: Was the invasion a surprise to the soldiers in the islands?

Artur: Well, first of all we did know what was going to happen, just not when and where. I was on duty the day the invasion started. You could hear the sound of the detonations at St Malo so clearly it was as if it happened in the northern part of the island. I kept looking up at the sky expecting to see parachutes but there weren’t any . The next day though, the sky was littered with aeroplanes. I had never seen anything like it. I remember thinking, that’s it, we are finished. There is nothing we can do about it now.

Interviewer: Did you think that your forces would be able to fight off the invasion?

Artur: No, I had stopped thinking that. I thought they would land on Guernsey, too. But they didn’t. So, we thought, they are going to cut us off, let us starve to death, which was what happened. We were cut off from the supply.

I’d also like to mention that on the Saturday before the invasion, we had planned to go into town, St Peter Port. It was a fine day just like today. We were standing outside the house, ready to go, when we suddenly saw aeroplanes in the skies above us. They kept coming, one after the other, flying towards the sun. Some came crashing down. They had attacked us because we had several radar units, three, I think. Two round ones and one long one. The units were only some eighty meters away from us and they wanted to destroy them before they would start to invade. It was a surprise attack and they succeeded. We were completely taken by surprise. Next door to us there was an army prison, in an old stone house. The guy in there was suddenly outside because the stone wall had gone. He run away covered in dust. We went up on the roof of our house. There we saw one of our anti-aircraft’s going up in flames and four or five of us dead…

Interviewer: Was that the only attack you remember during that period?

Artur: Well, they didn’t manage to destroy all our anti-aircraft during the first attack. When they came back the next day we were prepared. Rumours had it that some of the aeroplanes were downed but I am not sure and couldn’t say how many. The whole thing didn’t last very long, though. Once the invasion had started they left us alone.

Part 2 of this interview will be published separately

The idea behind the archive is that it will be an organic site that can be added to by members of the public. Its expected that this blog format will be used initially. This allows tagging of stories, with the most popular tagged items or words appearing in the searchable tag cloud to the right. This allows easy searching of related articles.

The addition of information will be a bit sporadic in the early phases as the site is soon to be overhauled visually (we know its not the prettiest girl on the block at present!) and so for now the archive will be supported under the In Toni’s Footsteps: The Channel Islands Occupation Remembered name but will eventually be moved into its more suitable location on new domain www.occupationarchive.co.uk. The first addition to the site is a story not actually about the Occupation as such but events following the Liberation of Alderney. Tonight there will also be added a transcript of the first of 24 interviews that were conducted with both islanders and serving German soldiers as part of the making of In Toni’s Footsteps: The Channel Islands Occupation Remembered

We are keen for people to start submitting new content and are planning on targeting local media and websites for contributions towards making this site the largest and most concise gathering of Occupation related information on the web, one that can serve as an archive of the time and a resource for generations of scholars to come. Site visitors can also comment on any of the stories that are featured, disagree, discuss or add an alternative viewpoint. The site is designed to be a community one where all visitors have a voice.

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Thanks

Carl
Project Leader- Occupation Archive