"Powerful" exhibition opens at Guernsey Museum

Friday 29 March 2019

A new exhibition about the victims of Nazi persecution in the Channel Islands is opening at Guernsey Museum today.

During the German Occupation of the Channel Islands between 1940 and 1945 thousands of people were persecuted, including Jews, slave labourers and those who resisted.

Based on the research of Dr Gilly Carr from Cambridge University, the exhibition tells stories of the persecuted and the post-war struggle to obtain recognition of their suffering. These range from the experiences of a young Jewish woman in hiding in Jersey, to those of a Spanish forced labourer in Alderney and the story of a man from Guernsey whose death in a German prison camp remained unknown to his family for more than 70 years.

Pictured: Paperknife carved by William Symes at Buchenwald concentration camp in1944 (image courtesy of Symes family).

The exhibition includes personal testimony and objects from the collections of Guernsey Museums and Galleries, Island Archives, Jersey Heritage, the Wiener Library, the German Occupation Museum, as well as personal items belonging to the victims of Nazi oppression.

It has been adapted from an exhibition previously shown at the Wiener Library for the study of the Holocaust and Genocide in London.

'On British Soil' is being opened by The Rt Hon the Lord Pickles who is the UK Post Holocaust Issues Envoy and co-chair of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation. It will run until 12 May and Guernsey Museum is open from 10:00 to 17:00 daily. Normal admission applies and visitors can also enjoy the Guernsey Old Car Club and Aaron Yeandle's photographic exhibition 'Chimera'.

Pictured top: V-for-Victory badge made by Roy Machon (image courtesy of Gilly Carr).