Special Screening: The Ghosts of Alderney

Artist Piers Secunda reveals new evidence of atrocities committed by the Nazis on British soil during World War Two.
About this Event

Artist Piers Secunda uncovers the hidden history of Alderney, to reveal new
evidence of atrocities committed by the Nazis on British soil during World
War two.
Slave workers from across Europe were shipped to this tiny island to build a
fortress for Hitler. Over 1000 died, but no one was prosecuted by the British
Government for war crimes.

When Hitler’s forces invaded, nobody knew just how brutal the occupation of
this piece of UK Crown land would become.
Secunda has made work memorialising some of the slaves who endured
random shootings, beatings and starvation.
People from all over Nazi Europe were shipped to the Channel Islands to
build the Fuhrer’s “fortress” against an Allied attack. It was in Alderney
however where the treatment was harshest.
Intelligence reports after Liberation reveal that bodies dumped in mass
graves were compared to victims of Belsen.
Using forensic testing, Secunda has established that German guards in the
SS-run concentration camp on Alderney used to compete for prizes of drink
and cigarettes by shooting prisoners against a wall. Such firing squads were used in European camps such as Auschwitz but Piers believes he has proof that this killing technique was used on Alderney too.

The film also tells how the UK Government hid the real reasons why it failed
to prosecute any German officers for war crimes.

A recent UK Government inquiry found that more than 1,100 people died on
Alderney but acknowledged there are many more missing.
Piers goes beyond the numbers to bring the names and faces of those who
suffered back to life.
“I’m not an historian, I’m an artist. I looked in places where nobody else has
looked,” he tells the film.
“The academic research deals with lists of names and adding up
numbers to create a total figure of number of people who came to Alderney.
But people aren't numbers. They're human beings. They have lives, they have
histories, backgrounds. And that's the story that I want to tell.”