Aims of the course:
- To introduce students to an often overlooked aspect of history, namely, the German occupation of the Channel Islands and the Nazi persecution that took place from 1940-1945;
- To familiarise students with key case studies from this episode of history;
- To allow students to see how the long arm of the Holocaust reached British soil.
Course content overview:
It is a little known fact that the long reach of the Holocaust was felt on British soil during WWII. German occupying forces had invaded the British Channel Islands in 1940, and legal measures against the Jews began to be enacted later that year, culminating in deportations in 1942 and 1943. Other kinds of Nazi persecution were also seen in the Channel Islands, especially against those who committed acts of resistance. Over 1300 islanders were imprisoned locally and more than 200 were deported to Nazi prisons and concentration camps. The Channel Islands were also host to as many as 16,000 forced and slave labourers, brought to the islands to build the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall. They were housed in labour camps, the remains of which have been all but obliterated in the modern landscape. This course also examines the aftermath of occupation for victims of Nazism through the compensation claims scheme of the mid-1960s. Finally, the course will end with a detailed insight into how the tutor went about finding the bodies of two islanders lost in the Nazi camp system for 70 years.
Where possible, this course will show copies of original archival material and will introduce students to key case studies. The five weeks of the course will be as follows:
1. The Jews of the Channel Islands
2. Political prisoners in the Channel Islands
3. Forced and slave workers in the Channel Islands
4. The 1960s compensation claims
5. Finding lost graves – a guide.
Schedule (this course is completed entirely online):
Orientation Week: 24 February-1 March 2020
Teaching Weeks: 2 March-5 April 2020
Feedback Week: 6-12 April 2020
Each week of an online course is roughly equivalent to 2-3 hours of classroom time. On top of this, participants should expect to spend roughly 2-3 hours reading material, etc., although this will vary from person to person.
While they have a specific start and end date and will follow a weekly schedule (for example, week 1 will cover topic A, week 2 will cover topic B), our tutor-led online courses are designed to be flexible and as such would normally not require participants to be online for a specific day of the week or time of the day (although some tutors may try to schedule times where participants can be online together for web seminars, which will be recorded so that those who are unable to be online at certain times are able to access material).
Unless otherwise stated, all course material will be posted on the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) so that they can be accessed at any time throughout the duration of the course and interaction with your tutor and fellow participants will take place through a variety of different ways which will allow for both synchronous and asynchronous learning (discussion boards,etc).
A Certificate of Participation will be awarded to participants who contribute constructively to weekly discussions and exercises/assignments for the duration of the course.
