Bailiwick takes part in International Holocaust Memorial Day

Monday, 27 January 2025 at 06:40

Services will take place to remember those who were put to death or persecuted by the Nazis.

People will gather at the Hammond Memorial in Alderney just before 11am to remember the thousands of slave labourers who were shipped to the island.

New evidence shows as many as 1,000 died there or in transit, and all endured harsh living and working conditions, building the German fortifications.

The memorial was put up by the Hammond family to serve as a focus for remembering the atrocities committed on Alderney by the occupying forces.

Dignitaries in Guernsey will gather at the Weighbridge end of the White Rock, near the plaque commemorating the three Jewesses who were deported in 1942 to their deaths as part of the Nazi Final Solution.

Also remembered will be the Guernsey Eight, who paid the ultimate price for acts of defiance against the German authorities, and the slave and forced labourers brought to work on the island and who endured harsh treatment.

The service will be led by the Dean of Guernsey, the very reverend Tim Barker:

"It is a significant day, when we are invited to remember both the destruction of human life by the Nazi regime, and the other genocides of the past, in places such as Darfur in Sudan, Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia and the Yazidi genocide.

The gatherings this year take on a special significance, because 2025 marks both the 80th anniversary of the discovery of unspeakable horrors at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the 30th anniversary (in June this year) of the murder of 8,000 Muslim men, and boys over 12 years old, in Srebrenica in Bosnia."

The Guernsey Music Centre String Quartet and local dancers will perform as part of the service at the Town Church from 1.30pm.