On 13/1/08 11:25, in article ,
"Eddy" wrote:

snip

Fascinating. My grandparents and uncle endured two years in the Channel
Islands under the Nazis, losing their farm and spending those two years
cooped in a rented room in town. They watched as the Germans closed
down the businesses of Jewish residents and rounded them up. And then
in 1942 Hitler ordered my grandparents and uncle, and all other
English-born residents, to be imprisoned in southern Germany. The toll
that those three years of "internment" took on my grandparents destroyed
them mentally. (And by the way, no compensation has ever been paid to
those particular prisoners, as it has to Japanese POWs for example, and,
also, there has never been any enquiry into the degree to which Channel
Island authorities collaborated with the Nazis for the five years of the
occupation. I believe that to this day certain papers have never been
declassified.)

There has long been controversy over the part the authorities played in this
but reading A Doctor's Occupation by Dr John Lewis seems to me to indicate
that everything was done that could be to prevent deportation. Of course,
we have to remember in modern times that nobody at that time knew the fate
of Jews under the Hitler regime.
My own family was expecting to be sent to an internment camp because all
they have a Jersey name, Le seelleur, my grandfather, grandmother, mother
and aunt were born in England. My father's family, the Valpys, were all
born in Jersey and my great-grandfather Le Seelleur and all preceding
generations were but the deportation of the English born was some sort of
reprisal for actions by the British in a war my family wasn't free to fight
in!
If you feel you'd like to Eddy, do email me and tell me about your family
and which island they were in - not Alderney, I hope! Remove the 'weeds'
from my address for email.


In our Parish magazine there was a short piece about young people in the sea
cadets collecting money during the Poppy Appeal in Totnes. Some equally
young drop out type came up to one young girl and told her she was
supporting 'murdering scum'. I do so wish I'd been there. I wonder if he
realises what would have happened to him if he'd said that to someone
collecting money for the Nazi party, from which fate he was saved by what
his ignorance describes as 'murdering scum'.

I think this one example you give, Sacha, states the situation
perfectly. That "young drop-out type" and thousands of other
non-drop-out types too would continue in the same attitude while lapping
up an extra public holiday.

Eddy.


Very probably but if we don't do *something*, it will all be consigned to
the dustbin of history that remains untaught. I am sure that not everybody
who takes Christmas Day as a holiday, goes to church but we still celebrate
Christmas.
--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove weeds from address)
'We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our
children.'