Caroline Sturdy Colls1, Kevin Colls2, Rachel Bolton-King2, Tim Harris2, Czelsie Weston2
1STAFFORDSHIRE UNIVERSITY, 2
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.
