The Channel Islands Occupation Archive

This is part 2 of the interview with Bernhard Weiss. He was drafted into the German army at 17yrs of age in 1943 and was immediately posted to the Channel Islands. Here he enjoyed a relatively trouble free life until starvation and low morale forced the soldiers to take drastic actions, including his shocking confession that he would hunt and eat cats to survive. His story continues…

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