Government archives have revealed that high-ranking officials on the island of Guernsey collaborated with Nazi occupiers during World War II and identified five Jews, at least two of whom later died in gas chambers.
One of the collaborators was knighted after the war, according to the wartime documents, which were suppressed for 53 years. The documents were among 1,800 wartime files released Tuesday by the States of Guernsey archive service.Guernsey, a British dependency off the northwest coast of France, was occupied from July 1, 1940, to May 9, 1945.
At that time, it had a population of about 23,000.
After the war, the British government cleared Guernsey's civilian administration of anything more than occasional "extremely unfortunate" actions. But the archives tell another tale.
On Nov. 22, 1940, German field command headquarters asked Bailiff Victor Carey, head of Guernsey's government, for the names and nationalities of Jews on the island.
The request was passed to Guernsey's police chief, William Sculpher, who drew up the list and sent it to Carey, saying he "had the honor to report" the names of five women.
Housewife Elizabeth Duquemin, 41, and widow Elda Brouard, 56, were listed as British. Auguste Spitz, 39, a domestic servant, and Theresia Steiner, 24, a Viennese music professor who fled England and then to the nearby island of Sark to work as a nanny, were listed as German. Annie Wran-owsky, 45, was listed as Czech.
Carey gave the report to the Rev. John Leale, a Methodist minister who was acting president of Guernsey's Controlling Committee, the civilian body administering the island under the occupation.
Leale handed the names to a German commander, one Col. Schu-macher, on Nov. 26, 1940, according to the archives.
Documents state that Carey, who was knighted by King George VI after the war, issued a series of anti-Jewish edicts.
On June 17, 1941, Carey told the Germans he "had the honor" of registering and publishing in the local paper an order that those whom the Germans deemed Jewish should be fired by their employers.
An updated list of all foreign residents on the island sent to the Germans in April 1942 in May 1942 left off the names of Steiner and Spitz.
Records at the Yad Vashen holocaust museum in Jerusalem indicate that the two were deported from France to Auschwitz, where they died.
Duquemin and Brouard were thought to have been arrested and sent to Germany but survived the war, said The Times of London.
Wranowsky, who protested that neither her parents nor grandparents were Jewish, was also believed to have survived.