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The Reunion

Factual: Life Stories

Series which reunites a group of people intimately involved in a moment of modern history

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The Reunion: Jersey Occupation

08/09/2013

Jersey Occupation

BBC Radio 4 - The Reunion, Jersey Occupation

Sue MacGregor and guests recall the Occupation of Jersey during the Second World War.

Sue MacGregor reunites five people who recall their experience of the German Occupation of Jersey during the Second World War.

On the 1st July 1940, Jersey was occupied by German forces. Some called it "the Model Occupation" - a taster of what might actually happen across the country if Hitler was successful in his plans to invade Britain.

Churchill's government had decided the Channel islands of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney and Sark, were of no strategic importance and would be very difficult to defend and so, just a couple of weeks before, all troops had been withdrawn from the islands. The islanders were instructed to surrender to the German army. Hitler's forces were in occupation from July 1940 until the war ended in May 1945.

These were hard years for both the occupiers and the occupied. Food was scarce and, although acts of resistance were limited, the justice was harsh when it was meted out. Those who lived on the island were faced with a complex crisis of conscience - how should they live with the enemy?

In this edition of The Reunion, Sue MacGregor reunites a group of Jersey people who endured that difficult time, finding out how they look back on it seventy years on: Bob Le Sueur, a young insurance clerk at the time, who helped Russian prisoners hide from their German Captors; Leo Harris, a teenager at the beginning of the war, who carried out acts of 'boys own' resistance; Michael Ginns, who found himself in an internment camp in Bavaria; Hazel Lakeman, who was also taken off the island and interned in terrible conditions; and John Floyd, one of the few Jersey residents who actually managed to escape from the island.

Producer: Kevin Dawson
Series Producer: David Prest

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