THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE The Jersey islanders who died in German prisons and concentration camps during the Occupation 1940 - 1945 Paul Sanders © Paul Sanders 2004 COVER IMAGE 'In the Camp' (1940), by Felix Nussbaum. Nussbaum was born in Osnabrueck, Germany, in 1904, and studied in Hamburg, Berlin and Rome. He settled in Belgium in 1935. After the German invasion of May 1940, he was arrested and sent to the camps of Saint Cyprien and Gurs ('The camps of shame'), in southern France. Nussbaum escaped and then went into hiding in Brussels. He was denounced in 1944 and transported to Auschwitz where he perished, on August 2, 1944. 2 Completely revised and updated second edition 2004 First published in Jersey in 1998 by Jersey Heritage Trust Copyright © 2004 Paul Sanders All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Paul Sanders has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work. ISBN 0 9538858 4 Typeset and layout, Jersey Heritage Trust Printed in Great Britain by Biddles Limited Jersey Heritage Trust Jersey Museum The Weighbridge St Helier Jersey JE2 3NF Tel 01534-633300 Fax 01534-633301 3 DEDICATION To Joe Mière Without whose decades of persistent groundwork the story of the twenty two Jersey prisoners would have remained untold To Peter Hassall Jersey’s ‘Night and Fog’ survivor who shared with the author the pain of his story of courage, compassion and endurance 4 ILLUSTRATIONS Portraits of Clifford Cohu, Joseph Tierney, John Nicolle, Arthur Dimmery, William Marsh, George Fox, Clifford Querée, Frederick Page, Clarence Painter, Peter Painter, Dorothy Painter, John Painter, Jean Painter, Ivy Forster, Dora Hacquoil, Alice Gavey, Frank Le Villio, Marcel Rossi, Walter Dauny taken from Occupation Registration cards (Jersey Archives Service, D/S/A), Gloucester Street Prison, Jersey (Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive), Feldgendarmerie headquarters in Bagatelle Road (Paul Sanders), Secret Field Police headquarters at Silvertide, Havre des Pas (Paul Sanders), The scene of a memorable 'wireless case' in occupied Jersey: St Saviour's Church and Parish Hall (Paul Sanders), Portrait of Emile Paisnel (Birdie Paisnel), Portrait of Maurice Gould (Jersey Archives Service, L/C/26/1), The beach at Green Island, Jersey (Paul Sanders), Pomme d'Or Hotel, the seat of the German Harbour Police in Jersey (Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive), Portraits of Peter Hassall and Dennis Audrain (Peter Hassall), Fresnes Prison near Paris (Paul Sanders), SS-Special Camp Hinzert in 1946 (Peter Hassall), Wittlich Prison (Peter Hassall), 'Work' in the Concentration Camp: Hundreds of prisoners perished hauling blocks of granite up the notorious 'staircase' leading from the Mauthausen quarry (Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine, CCXLV - 350), Maurice Gould’s grave in Howard Davis Park, St Helier (Paul Sanders), Peter and Clarence Painter in happier days (John Painter), Portraits of James Houillebecq and Louisa Gould (Joe Mière), Harold Le Druillenec MBE after the war (Jersey Archives Service), Commemorative plaque at La Fontaine Millais, St Ouen (Rex Forster), Portrait of Frank Le Villio 1945/46, Portrait of Advocate Ogier (Joe Mière), Young Advocate Ogier; Ogier's younger son Richard at the time of the Occupation; Ogier's wife Emma; The Ogier children Kenneth, Barbara and Richard in 1951 (Helen Ogier), Biberach town in 1945 (Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive), Biberach Internment Camp (Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive), June Sinclair (Joe Mière), Wireless confiscation notice (Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive), Major General Müller, Commander of 319th Infantry Division and Head of overall command in the Channel Islands from May 1941 to September 1943 (Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive), Major General Graf von Schmettow in 1944 (Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive), German sailor with Police Constable, The Duchess of Kent meeting escapees after the Occupation, Colonel Knackfuss (Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive), The Memorial to the Jersey Twenty in St Helier (Paul Sanders). 5 CONTENTS Foreword by Sir Philip Bailhache, Bailiff of Jersey 8 Acknowledgements 9 Note on terminology 13 Introduction 15 PART ONE ‘Offences against the Occupying Authorities’ The Case Histories The St Saviour's Wireless Case 21 William Marsh's Fatal Breach of the Nazi Work Ethic 28 The Frankfurt and Naumburg Seven 31 Into the Night and Fog 43 Compassion with a Capital C - Louisa Gould's 'Family Affair' 65 An Icon Turned Martyr - The Ogier Case 86 The Kreuzburg Internment Trap 90 The Fatal Escapades of a Small-time Juvenile Delinquent 94 Without a Trace - June Sinclair and Peter Johnson 97 Conclusion 99 6 PART TWO ‘Impressions of an Occupation‘ Inselwahn, Security Obsessions and Radio War 104 Resistance, à la Jerriaise 122 Offences against the Island Authorities? 139 Perspectives of Memorialisation 174 Addendum by Paula Thelwell, Edward Muels and John Soyer 180 Appendix, notes relating to a list compiled by Joe Mière of islanders deported to prisons and camps 183 Sources 184 Bibliography 188 Index 193 7 FOREWORD There is nothing noble about a military occupation. From the viewpoint of the occupied it is a period of continuing humiliation. For the occupier it is often a corrosive and corrupting experience. For Channel Islanders, the small size of the islands and the vast scale of the fortifications inflicted upon them, made the five years of German occupation between 1940 and 1945 a time of suffocation, intrusion and social paralysis. Moral ambiguities abounded. Where was the line to be drawn between submission and collaboration, between intransigence and resistance? In this important contribution to the expanding literature of the German occupation of the Channel Islands, Paul Sanders examines the histories of twenty individuals who were deported from Jersey for trivial offences against the occupying authorities, and who never returned. It is a fitting adjunct to the memorial on the New North Quay unveiled in 1996. But of equal importance is the analysis which follows of the meaning of defiance in the context of small communities largely bereft of their menfolk of fighting age, and swamped by superior force. Taken in the round, Channel Islanders who endured the German occupation have little of which to be ashamed. This was no model occupation. We owe a debt to the author for sweeping aside many misconceptions and for helping to lay the foundations for more detailed and objective historical study of documentation now available than has yet seen the light of day. Sir Philip Bailhache, Bailiff of Jersey 8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Five and a half years have passed since this book first went public and almost seven years since I first started research, a period that has seen many an interesting turn: two new names, Jack Soyer and Edward Muels, were added to the Lighthouse Memorial on New North Quay, bringing the total number of Jersey offenders who died during the Occupation to twenty-two; the Jersey Archives Service, my place of work during several months in 1997, moved to a branché and wonderfully light and spacious building in 2000. I am afraid to say that it wasn’t the sweet words of encouragement in my last chapter that lay at the base of this development; one thing, however, I have had a hand in was the fact that there have been few significant sensationalist attempts to exploit the topic of Jersey’s wartime record and that, perhaps more importantly, the tone of the discussion is becoming more to the point and matter-of-fact. Openness and transparency, best reflected in the archives’ policy, is paying off. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say that this text, despite its modest volume and other limitations, has created a new minimum critical standard for research. For one thing it is based on a variety of previously unpublished material at the Jersey and Guernsey Archives, the Public Record Office, the Bundesarchiv and several other repositories in France and Germany. This brings a breath of fresh air to what has become, over the years, a rather stale diet of popular authors repackaging and reiterating elements found in other publications. Worse, this undiscerning research ethic has led to the inevitable transmission of errors, from one book to the next. Knowing that this publication would be submitted to particularly exacting scrutiny - characterized as it is by the intention to ‘de-contaminate’ and refocus on the real issue of Jersey offenders - all information has been checked and counterchecked, thereby reducing the error margin to what was humanely and realistically achievable by one man working with finite resources and time. In all those cases where information could not be conclusively evidenced, the deliberate choice was made to discard rather than to peddle ‘untruths’ and give them a further lease of life. Had we not done so, the narrative flow might have been enhanced at times, but at the price of veracity. And this was a price we were unwilling to pay. As a historian I am also extremely pleased about another development that has seen the light of day, the funding scheme to further professional research into the history of the Channel Islands introduced by the Jersey Heritage Trust. With the first edition of this book having proven popular enough to sell out in five years, and with demand continuing, I am both pleased and privileged 9 to have been asked to update and rejuvenate this text for a second edition. The result of this effort is, hopefully, an improved text, containing material which only surfaced recently. Prose and narrative style also received a good polishing. Naturally, no book like this is a ‘one-man’ effort and I owe a steadily rising debt to many individuals and institutions. The egg was hatched at the Jersey Archives Service, where the first archival research began in May 1997.