Lager Helgoland facts for kids
Lager Helgoland was a Nazi concentration camp on Alderney in the Channel Islands, named after the Frisian Island of Heligoland (German: Helgoland), a former British possession handed over to Germany in 1890.
The Germans built four concentration camps on Alderney, run as subcamps of the Neuengamme concentration camp (in Hamburg, Germany). Each subcamp was named after one of the Frisian Islands:
- Lager Norderney at Saye,
- Lager Borkum at Platte Saline,
- Lager Sylt near the old telegraph tower at La Foulère and
- Lager Helgoland, in the northwest corner of the island.
700 people died in the Alderney concentration camps (out of a total inmate population of about 6,000). These were the only Nazi concentration camps on British soil.
It was organised by the Schutzstaffel - SS-Baubrigade I–which was first under supervision of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin; and from mid-February 1943 under the Neuengamme camp in northern Germany. It was used by the Nazi Organisation Todt forced labour programme, to build bunkers, gun emplacements, air-raid shelters, and concrete fortifications.
Lager Helgoland was in the northwest corner of Alderney. The Borkum and Helgoland camps were called "volunteer" (Hilfswillige) labour camps and the labourers in those camps were treated harshly but marginally better than the inmates at the Sylt and Norderney camps. The prisoners in Lager Sylt and Lager Norderney were slave labourers forced to build the many military fortifications and installations throughout Alderney. Sylt camp held Jewish enforced labourers and was a death camp. Norderney camp housed European (usually Eastern but including Spaniard) and Russian enforced labourers. Lager Borkum was used for German technicians and volunteers from different countries of Europe. Lager Helgoland was filled with Russian Organisation Todt workers. (For further information on Alderney concentration camps, see Appendix F: Concentration Camps: Endlösung – The Final Solution; Alderney, a Nazi concentration camp on an island Anglo-Norman;.
Related pages
- Nazi concentration camp list
- Neuengamme concentration camp subcamp list
- The Holocaust
