10 March 2010


Dear Sir

It is easy to point the finger at other nations, but few countries are willing to admit to reprehensible collective acts committed during their history – some do, but only many decades later (Guardian 10 March: La Rafle confronts wartime stain on French history - Film attempts to recreate the terror of the 1942 Rafle du Vel d'Hiv, in which 13,000 Jews were rounded up in Paris). The Turks are still refusing to admit their genocide of the Armenians and we have still not addressed the role of HM representatives in the Channel Islands during the Nazi occupation. Few today realise that the Nazis actually occupied a part of Britain and that the police and island administrations co-operated willingly with the Nazis, deporting Jews and accepting the slave labour and ill-treatment of Russian POWs. No one has been asked to account for this; it has been brushed under the carpet. The Governor of Jersey was even knighted for services to the Crown!