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VenueOccupied Behind Barbed Wire, by Gillian Carr, is published by Jersey Heritage and may be bought from the shop at Jersey Heritage sites. Price £4.95.
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from 06.02 to 06.06.2010Book review: Deported from Jersey
A new book published by Jersey Heritage, Occupied Behind Barbed Wire, takes as its subject the experience of wartime Channel Island internees, as expressed through the range of artefacts and art they produced in captivity.
From 1942 to 1945, around 2,300 Channel Islanders were forcibly deported to German civilian internment camps in France, Germany, and further afield.
Using mainly their Red Cross parcels as raw materials, they recycled the wooden parcel crates, parcel wrapping and string, cardboard parcels, cellophane packing materials and empty food tins to make items that ranged from football trophies to communion chalices, chess sets to stage sets, and brooches to trinket boxes.
Examining these often-overlooked items is the author, Dr Gillian Carr, from Guernsey, a university lecturer in archaeology at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Continuing Education. Non-native Channel Islanders were deported as a reciprocal measure for the internment by the British of German Nationals in Iran.
The most poignant tales are sometimes told by the artwork and handicrafts made by the internees, which are today spread across private and public museums, archives and homes across the Channel Islands.
From 12 December 1942 onwards the Red Cross began to send regular parcels to the camps. People were so hungry that one internee wrote that she ‘nearly ate the wrappings as well’.
The Red Cross food tins were especially easy and popular to recycle, once it was discovered that they could be easily flattened and folded or cut into new objects. Sharp edges could be folded over, edges could be crimped and surfaces could be – and were – engraved. People began to make plates, mugs and trays, sometimes engraved, and would give them as gifts.
Other examples of recycled tins included sports trophies, hair curlers, a communion chalice, primus stoves and a coffee percolator.
The string was dyed using various foodstuffs, such as beetroot or red cabbage, to make bright colours. The cardboard itself could be used to make the template for soles of shoes.
The wooden packing cases were useful for making into items of furniture, or into board games such as shove-ha’penny or cribbage.
Florence Fish, interned in Wurzach, made nearly 100 Heidi dolls from scraps of material provided by fellow internees. The hair, hat and basket were made from parcel string and the doll’s socks were made from bandages.
The fashion for making Christmas cards became very popular. The work of certain talented artists crops up in many personal collections in the Channel Islands today.
Theatres were set up in all the camps, and hugely well-attended plays and variety shows were held frequently, the costumes for which were made from YMCA-supplied crêpe paper and Red Cross clothing.
To quote from an internee’s diary: ‘Although the Germans have got us behind barbed wire, they cannot stop us enjoying ourselves.’’
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