How Deadly Were the UK’s Secret Nazi Concentration Camps?

Smithsonian Channel

 Six million Jews died in the Holocaust, and yet not a word about them is spoken during Adolf Island, a new documentary special premiering on the Smithsonian Channel (June 23) that investigates the only SS-run concentration camps on British soil—specifically, on the Jersey Island of Alderney, 60 miles off the South Coast of England.

A hevily protected concrete block house on the camp's perimiter, note the especially thick concrete roof, this camp was expecting to be heavily bombed and was clearly being built for a very special purpose. SS larger Sylt was the only Nazi Concentration Camp built on UK soil

According to the program, the men and women rounded up by the Nazis were “dissidents and outsiders” and “political opponents,” but as for Jews, well, they don’t warrant a single mention, even in passing—an omission that epitomizes the speciousness of this hour-long program.

Adolf Island claims that it wants to uncover long-buried WWII Alderney atrocities in order to pay tribute to the experiences of the slain. However, it goes out of its way to not actually identify the types of people who might have perished on the island. Alderney boasted two work camps (Borkum and Helgoland) and two concentration camps (Norderney and Sylt), and Sylt was operated by the SS—and housed, that’s right, Jews.

The Dachau concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp near the town of Dachau in Munich, Germany. It was built in 1933 and was opened until 1945. Dachau is one of the Nazi concentration camps best known and visited by the public. At the moment the facilities fulfill the function of Commemorative Museum on July 23, 2018 in Munich, Germany.

 Regardless, the show only discusses these facilities’ victims in a generic manner, even as archival footage depicts gaunt concentration camp inmates who, at least to some degree, were likely Jewish. Its narrative-warping silence is all the more striking considering its purported goal, articulated by a Washington, D.C., Holocaust Museum interviewee: to learn more about small concentration camps because “one of the things that we really try to do here is bring back people’s identities, humanize them. That they’re not just numbers, but that they’re actual people that had lives.”

The Dachau concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp near the town of Dachau in Munich, Germany. It was built in 1933 and was opened until 1945. Dachau is one of the Nazi concentration camps best known and visited by the public. At the moment the facilities fulfill the function of Commemorative Museum on July 23, 2018 in Munich, Germany.

 That they did—many of them Jewish lives!—although good luck finding out much about them here. Adolf Island details the work of professor and forensic investigator Caroline Sturdy Colls, whose prior research led to the discovery of mass graves at the Treblinka concentration camp.

As Colls explains, Hitler invaded Alderney in 1940 as part of his larger takeover of the entire Jersey Islands, which he planned to fortify as military bases that would help him control the English Channel. Archival footage of German officers having their car doors opened by British police officers certainly proves chilling, as does present-day imagery of the remnants of the German occupation—concrete barrier walls, gun turrets and army barracks—that still pepper the windswept locale’s landscape.

The Dachau concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp near the town of Dachau in Munich, Germany. It was built in 1933 and was opened until 1945. Dachau is one of the Nazi concentration camps best known and visited by the public. At the moment the facilities fulfill the function of Commemorative Museum on July 23, 2018 in Munich, Germany

Colls arrives in Alderney with the hope of excavating near a cemetery at Longis Common where 336 German prisoners were buried, because she suspects that the actual body count was far greater. Given the Nazis’ homicidal ruthlessness, Colls’ suspicions seem perfectly valid. 

The actual evidence she has to suggest this is true, however, only amounts to her familiarity with Nazi practices, and a few anecdotal accounts about which we’re briefly informed. Nonetheless, Colls acts as if she’s on the verge of making monumental history. “This is probably the biggest murder case on British soil in the modern age,” she proclaims at outset.

An impediment to Colls’ research soon arises in the form of the local Alderney government, via a letter denying her request to perform archaeological digs; only non-invasive measures are permitted. This is cast by Colls, and Adolf Island, as a blatant denial of history and cover-up of wartime horrors, because doing so allows Colls to present herself as a persecuted crusader.

The Dachau concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp near the town of Dachau in Munich, Germany. It was built in 1933 and was opened until 1945. Dachau is one of the Nazi concentration camps best known and visited by the public. At the moment the facilities fulfill the function of Commemorative Museum on July 23, 2018 in Munich, Germany.

The problem is, we never directly hear from the Alderney government about its reasoning, which makes this David-vs.-Goliath dynamic feel as false and manufactured as the many shots of Colls walking around Alderney. Never fear, though, as Colls enlists the help of an expert team of drone operators (their airborne devices equipped with LIDAR technology) to photograph the sites in question—techniques that afford never-before-seen views of the structures hidden beneath Alderney’s brush-covered surface.

The results, you’ll be stunned to hear, are…underwhelming. Moreover, they fail to achieve Colls’ stated aims: to comprehend the true scale of the camp (which remains only vaguely known); to deduce how it functioned (the best she can tell, it was a labor camp, and sometimes sent prisoners back to Germany’s Neuengamme camp); and to determine who its victims were (again, maybe…Jews?!?).

German artist Gunter Demnig puts 3 Snublesten (Stolpersteine; stumbling stones) - in front of the Synagogue in Copenhagen, on June 17, 2019. - Stumbling blocks are memorial stones laid in the pavement next to houses where victims of Nazism had their homes. The Danish initiative group behind the decommissioning has chosen to put the stumbling blocks for 12 people, all of whom became victims of the Holocaust. Some of the victims are Danish Jews, others are stateless. The Danish victims were deported after Nazi Germany in October 1943 decided to take all Danish Jews and send them to concentration camps in Germany. Since 1992, Gunter Demnig has placed over 74, 000 Snublesten in 24 European countries.

Rather than providing real insight into its central questions, Adolf Island infers through unsubstantiated tidbits as a means of tricking viewers into thinking the fluff they’re hearing about and seeing is concrete proof of something. That’s never more true than during the finale, when Colls reports that she’s “identified features that have characteristics of unmarked burials”—and then the narrator baldly triples down by stating that Colls has unearthed “a crime scene” and that her data “confirm the presence of the mass grave.”

Speaking of the narrator: rarely has voiceover been as bluntly expository as it is in this program. Everything is relayed in the most loaded, portentous and/or overblown language imaginable, and that goes for Colls as well, whose to-the-camera utterances are all carefully written sound bites.

The Dachau concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp near the town of Dachau in Munich, Germany. It was built in 1933 and was opened until 1945. Dachau is one of the Nazi concentration camps best known and visited by the public. At the moment the facilities fulfill the function of Commemorative Museum on July 23, 2018 in Munich, Germany.

Practical maps, cursory newsreel clips and ominous music round out this unimaginative package. While it’s easy to excuse such crude aesthetics as part and parcel of a reality-TV production designed for easy digestion—replete with post-commercial recaps of the prior action, for those viewers just tuning in—they stand in sharp contrast to the more daring non-fiction artistry that can be found, on a routine basis, on HBO, Netflix, and numerous other small-screen outlets.

In effect, Adolf Island is a lot like those dishonest ghost-hunting cable shows that overhype the importance of their sleuthing, treat each new development like a bombshell (before speeding on to the next one), and then end by making definitive conclusions that aren’t supported by the preceding findings.

The Dachau concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp near the town of Dachau in Munich, Germany. It was built in 1933 and was opened until 1945. Dachau is one of the Nazi concentration camps best known and visited by the public. At the moment the facilities fulfill the function of Commemorative Museum on July 23, 2018 in Munich, Germany

Colls comes across as sincerely interested in examining and exposing heretofore-ignored Nazi malevolence. Nonetheless, by trading in faux-revelations, and treating common-sense logic as headline-deserving news—I mean, can you believe Himmler gave SS commandants the authority to kill concentration camp prisoners?—her Alderney inquiry comes across as a disingenuous attempt to give voice to those who died in the Holocaust.

The vast majority of which were, you know, Jews.