Excavation of a Nazi Camp on British Soil –
Dr Gillian Carr
Report by
Tom Meharg
The UCD Archaeology society was delighted
to host Dr Gillian Carr as our guest lecturer on the 20th October.
Dr Carr is a Senior Lecturer and Academic Director in Archaeology at Cambridge
University working primarily in the field of conflict archaeology. Dr Carr’s
lecture focused on recent excavations of a Nazi Camp on the island of Jersey,
one of the few places of German occupation on British soil. Through
investigation of the Lager Wick camp and other remnants of the wartime past of
Jersey aspects of the islands history and the narrative of occupation were
scrutinised against the physical evidence. Insights to life of the inmates,
guards, and islanders, who interacted with the camp through occupation and
after the war, are made available in the archaeological record. Dr Carr’s
lecture presented the realities of the hidden history of Nazi occupied Jersey.
The lecture initially outlined the
occupation from the Late June invasion of 1940 to the final withdrawal after
D-Day and Operation Overlord and in 1944. Slave labour camps throughout the
Channel Islands housed foreign labourers brought to the island to construct the
Atlantic Sea Wall. Looking at the archaeology of the islands from a landscape
perspective a huge industrial urban infrastructure is apparent. Quarries, stone
crushing buildings, railways, and bunkers scar the land. Dr Carr drew a
parallel between occupied Jersey and Norway, describing it as a ‘Landscape of
Evil’ a land of occupation and forced labour.
The main focus of the lecture was ‘Lager
Wick’ a slave labour camp on Jersey. Understanding this site required a multidisciplinary
effort, a simple archaeological approach was not appropriate. The importance of
eye witness accounts was incredibly valuable for testimony of the purpose of
the camp and the experience of the labourers. Today the site is heavily
overgrown and geophysical surveying is impossible. A great source of
information were wartime aerial photographs, however problems of resolution,
shadow, and the temporary, shifting nature of the camp buildings means these
images were difficult to interpret. In addition to this the Germans had made a
conscious effort to obscure the actual camp, for example, one of the yards was
built in the shape of an ornamental garden to mislead wartime intelligence.
With some areas of interest identified, Dr Carr was ready to excavate.
The lecture continued to present
information gained through excavation. In the 2014 season posts, gates, and
fences of the camp’s perimeters were uncovered. It looked as if a 7ft barbed
wire fence surrounded Lager Wick during the war although an eye witness claimed
a local farmer installed the excessive 7ft fence after the war. It became apparent through excavation that
many of the wooden buildings were on stilts and an attempt to raise the ground
level with beach sand was also evident. Finds of iron nails and concrete also
scattered the site.
In the 2015 and 2016 excavation seasons a
building initially interpreted as a latrine block contained combs, medicine
bottles and a tooth brush. It was suggested that this latrine was for higher
officers due to a French hotel ashtray discovered in the trench. Upon
revisiting the site in 2016 the story changed, finds suggested the latrine was
probably a potato store instead, cashes of seashells pointed towards a period
of starvation in camp. This highlights the difficulty of identifying a building
through material culture.
Other areas excavated included the molten
glass and charcoal remains of a barrack lodge identified through augering. Also
found here were cufflinks, a schnapps glass, and a mug with the eagle and
swastika motif, suggesting this was the overseers lodging. Other finds on the
site associated with the camp included a padlock, a spade and a boot. However
Dr Carr explained the difficulty of identifying some items as ‘camp material
culture’ due to the fact that the area had been used as a communal dump in the
post war era.
The greatest outcome of these excavations
is a challenge to the silent history of occupation in Jersey and the Channel
Islands. The victory narrative overrides an interest in the actuality of
occupation life and many of the islanders are sceptical of the benefits of such
activities. To open a dialogue and research slave labour camps and the wartime
experience may help archaeologist identify other such sites in occupied Europe.
Although the material culture at Lager Wick mainly represents the occupying
force it is a side of history often supressed in the traditional narrative of
these islands.
