Nazi Prisons in Britain by Gilly Carr

Author:Gilly Carr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pen and Sword Military
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Lucy had chosen ‘F’ to start the organisation for her as a more acceptable candidate, but we don’t know who ‘F’ was and whether F was the initial of their first name or surname. It is possible that it was Frank Keiller (or Killer as he was then), a Victoria College schoolboy whose father was the vicar of St Mark’s Church, but he was likely to have still been suffering in solitary confinement at this time. In any case, although Frank would one day be known through his political prisoner memoir, he was not the initiator of any political prisoner association.

Despite Leslie Sinel’s reference to those coming out of prison being inducted into an ‘Order of Old Glostonians’ in March 1945, 25 no such lasting official organisation emerged after the Occupation. According to the Jersey Evening Post, however, on 8 December 1945, the Lyric Hall was filled with ‘Ex-Convicts’ (i.e. former political prisoners). The meeting was called because they had heard that twenty26 of their ‘former comrades in Gloucester Street were carried off to prisons in France and Germany’ and had not returned. Their dependents were facing financial hardship. The Revd Mylne, a former prisoner, chaired the meeting; Deputy Edward Le Quesne, as a former prisoner, spoke as well. A committee was elected and instructed to make an appeal to the local government for immediate relief for these families, and a private fund was also started ‘in order to help the dependants of comrades’, the details of which were to be made public through the Jersey Evening Post.27

The Ex-Convicts wanted to discuss a further issue: raising a memorial at a suitable spot in the Island to those who died. While funds were also collected at the meeting to help those in need, in January 1947 the States of Jersey passed an act to give an extra-statutory award in respect of the death or disablement of those who were deported during the Occupation.28 Nineteen awards were eventually made.29

A memorial would not be erected to the Jersey 2130 for another fifty years, so we might assume that this bid did not meet with success. It is possible, however, that when the States erected a memorial at Noirmont Point on the south coast of Jersey in 1947, in memory of ‘those men and women of Jersey who perished in the Second World War, 1939–1945’, that the Ex-Convicts were told that this included their people. We can only assume that they were – or had to be – content with this, given the lack of any other memorial bearing names until 1996. As the Ex-Convicts do not recur as a fighting force after this period, we can only assume that their political and charitable needs were met and so they disbanded, even if their bonds of friendship remained for a longer period.

The vocation of becoming a ‘guardian of memory’ for Jersey’s political prisoners was taken up by Joe Mière. In 1948 he was demobbed from the army and started building a collection of photos and testimonies of political prisoners.

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