“Harry was here 1945”: Graffiti and the Nazi Occupation of Alderney

Description

During the Second World War, the island of Alderney in the British Channel Islands was occupied by the Nazis, who intended to use the island as a strategically advantageous position from which they could invade mainland Britain. In order to facilitate the large-scale construction of fortifications, thousands of people were sent there from across Europe to undertake forced labour. Housed in a network of camps, these prisoners were held in appalling living conditions, beatings and ill-treatment were common, and many were literally worked to death. These prisoners and their overseers left behind a complex body of graffiti which attests to their existence on the island. Likewise, the fortifications built by the prisoners have seen various layers of graffiti added to them over the years by people who have inhabited or visited Alderney. This paper will consider the contribution of this graffiti to our knowledge about the events of the Occupation and the various ways it can be used to recall individual and collective experiences. As some of the graffiti takes the form of names of prisoners, the role of this evidence in identifying individuals will also be considered. Graffiti created since the end of the Second World War will also be addressed in order to evaluate how these motifs can help assess past and present attitudes towards the Occupation. Looking to the future, this paper will consider the role of graffiti as evidence of recent conflict

Period	Sep 2015
Event title	21st Annual European Association of Archaeologists Conference
Event type	Conference
Conference number	21
Location	Glasgow, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International