Lager Helgoland

Lager Helgoland was a Nazi concentration camp on Alderney in the Channel Islands, named after the Frisian Island of Heligoland (), a former British possession handed over to Germany in 1890.

The Germans built four concentration camps on Alderney, run as subcamps of the Neuengamme concentration camp (in Hamburg, Germany). Each subcamp was named after one of the Frisian Islands: 
Lager Norderney at Saye,
Lager Borkum at Platte Saline,
Lager Sylt near the old telegraph tower at La Foulère and
Lager Helgoland, in the northwest corner of the island.

700 people died in the Alderney concentration camps (out of a total inmate population of about 6,000). These were the only Nazi concentration camps on British soil.

It was organised by the Schutzstaffel - SS-Baubrigade I–which was first under supervision of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin; and from mid-February 1943 under the Neuengamme camp in northern Germany.  It was used by the Nazi Organisation Todt forced labour programme, to build bunkers, gun emplacements, air-raid shelters, and concrete fortifications.

Lager Helgoland was in the northwest corner of Alderney. The Borkum and Helgoland camps were called "volunteer" (Hilfswillige) labour campsChristian Streit: Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die Sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen, 1941-1945, Bonn: Dietz (3. Aufl., 1. Aufl. 1978),  - "Between 22 June 1941 and the end of the war, roughly 5.7 million members of the Red Army fell into German hands. In January 1945, 930,000 were still in German camps. A million at most had been released, most of whom were so-called "volunteers" (Hilfswillige) for (often compulsory) auxiliary service in the Wehrmacht. Another 500,000, as estimated by the Army High Command, had either fled or been liberated. The remaining 3,300,000 (57.5 percent of the total) had perished." and the labourers in those camps were treated harshly but marginally better than the inmates at the Sylt and Norderney camps. The prisoners in Lager Sylt and Lager Norderney were slave labourers forced to build the many military fortifications and installations throughout Alderney. Sylt camp held Jewish enforced labourers and was a death camp. Norderney camp housed European (usually Eastern but including Spaniard) and Russian enforced labourers. Lager Borkum was used for German technicians and volunteers from different countries of Europe. Lager Helgoland was filled with Russian Organisation Todt workers. (For further information on Alderney concentration camps, see Appendix F: Concentration Camps: Endlösung – The Final Solution; Alderney, a Nazi concentration camp on an island Anglo-Norman;. 

Related pages
 Nazi concentration camp list
 Neuengamme concentration camp subcamp list
 The Holocaust

References

Category:Nazi concentration camps on Alderney