This book is based on nearly a hundred interviews with islanders and labour camp survivors. This oral history is supported by a wealth of newly released archival material. In December 1992 the Home Office released twenty-eight files which were to have remained closed until the year 2045. Pressure in Parliament and newspapers persuaded the Heritage Secretary, William Waldegrave, to open the files to the public as part of Prime Minister John Major’s ‘open government’ initiative. Their early release followed an agreement with the Channel Islands, and in January 1993 the Guernsey States Archives, with their unparalleled documentation of the Occupation government and the German military administration, were finally opened to the public. The Jersey archives were not opened until March 1994, the delay being largely due to the fact that in November 1991 the entire collection was stolen from an attic cupboard in the island’s parliament building. The majority of the documents were recovered, and were held as police evidence for nearly two years, but by special permission of the Bailiff of Jersey, Sir Peter Crill, and the Jersey police headquarters, I was given full access to them.
I was the first researcher to see documents concerning Alderney in the Russian State Archives in Moscow, which had been declassified only a few weeks before my arrival in May 1993. This new material added to the large volume of documents, which had never been properly researched, in the Centre de Documentation Juive et Contemporaine in Paris, in the Imperial War Museum in London, and in the Public Record Office at Kew.
Many documents in Britain and on the Channel Islands have been destroyed, some probably as a matter of routine, but others possibly to prevent embarrassment.
I am very grateful to a number of islanders and historians who have provided new information or made suggestions following the publication of this book in hardback. I have incorporated a large number of their points in this paperback edition, which also includes a new appendix on ‘The Jewish Question’.