The majority of Jersey and Guernsey records relating to the Holocaust have been made available for the public to view in person, the governments of both islands have said.
Both committed to making all Holocaust records public in 2022 and said many of the records have since been digitised and made available online, with work ongoing to complete the digitisation.
Jersey Heritage said many records were available, including files from German troop courts as well as naturalisation and immigration files covering “people of Jewish faith”.
A spokesperson for Guernsey’s Island Archives said a “significant amount of work” had been done to preserve records from the bailiwick’s occupation.
The UK Government also committed to making all Holocaust records public in 2022.
Jersey Heritage said it had identified one record relating to Jewish people in the naturalisation files – about a former Austrian citizen and his wife, staying in London, who had applied to come to Jersey.
Letters from the file showed the couple’s application was refused and they applied to the Home Office for a travel document to move to America.
Jersey Heritage said its immigration files also showed details of five Jewish people who applied to come to the islands in the 1930s, adding the records showed “the States of Jersey policy towards Jewish immigration at the time”.
It said there were “still some records closed from the occupation period but these were documents subject to standard closure periods and were not unique to the occupation”, such as education and hospital records.
A spokesperson for the States of Guernsey said staff at the Island Archives were about halfway through the current batch of digitisation, but expected it to be several years before all records had been digitised.
Island Archives said “some of the most popular records” had been digitised and were available online, while others were available to view in person.
It said overseas people doing research could also contact the Island Archives to put them in touch with a local researcher.
Guernsey and Jersey were occupied by Nazi Germany during World War II, and Jews on the islands faced persecution, with many being deported to concentration camps
