World War Two and amid the slaughter, a little known story – the biggest mass murder on British soil.
The place – the tiny Channel Island of Alderney, where thousands of slave workers from across occupied Europe toiled to build a fortress for Hitler.
Eighty years after the end of the war, Wild Dog is revealing secrets and lies in a feature length documentary Ghosts of Alderney – Hitler’s Island Slaves.
Artist and researcher Piers Secunda – whose grandfather flew over Alderney and was shot at by German guns – has spent five years tracing relatives of the labourers who managed to survive the Nazi regime of atrocities.
Using their stories of love and death , and with interviews from eminent historians, Piers puts faces and names to men from some of the 30 nationalities sent to the “Rocher Maudit” – the accursed island, as it was called.
His aim is to ensure that among the remembrance of the military forces who sacrificed their lives, we do not forget the thousands who, as prisoners, also suffered just a few miles from the British mainland.
Nobody really knows just how many men and women perished on Alderney – bodies were often thrown over the cliffs – but what is striking is that despite a war crimes investigation, no German forces faced justice in a British court.
Piers illuminates the parallels to today by revealing the ghosts of the past, and by telling their stories.
Music by David Knopfler
Filmed and Edited by Andrew Johnstone, Produced and Directed by Zoe Clough, Robert Hall and Andrew Johnstone
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