More than two thousand people from the British Channel Islands were deported to and interned in Germany during the Second World War, making up as many as 60% of all interned British citizens in occupied territory during this period.
This book carries out an in-depth analysis of artwork, objects, oral testimonies, archives, poetry, letters, diaries and memoirs gathered from the internees and drawing from around one hundred collections. The work is based on over 15 years of research and interviews with more than 65 former internees, and explores analytical themes and narratives of placemaking, resistance, communities, food and cooking. It also proposes new concepts and categories to help us understand objects that distinguish the experience of internment.
This book will be of great value for scholars and museum professionals, as well as postgraduate students in the field of Conflict Archaeology and scholars of the Second World War. Cumulatively, this materiality comprises one of the major surviving assemblages of internees to emerge from the war, comparable in size, quality and importance with that from other theatres of war.
1. Introduction: A materiality of internment 2. A history of the deportation of Channel Islanders 3. Dorsten: A lack of materiality 4. The material help of American friends in the French transit and internment camp of Royallieu, Compiègne 5. A materiality of placemaking and campscapes 6. A materiality of resistance? 7. An intimate materiality 8. A materiality of community 9. A materiality of aftermath: from liberation to compensation, 1945-1995 10. Reconciliation, a materiality of post-internment and conclusion
Biography
Dr Gilly Carr is Associate Professor and Academic Director in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St Catharine’s College. She publishes in the fields of archaeology, heritage studies, Holocaust studies and history and is also the author of seven monographs, including Victims of Nazi Persecution in the Channel Islands.
