The Goodness of Strangers: Help to Escaped Russian Slave Labourers in Occupied Jersey, 1942–1945

Abstract

Between 1942 and 1945, 5,300 Organisation Todt workers were brought to Jersey to build the defensive fortifications ordered by Hitler. A small number of Russian slave labourers escaped from island camps and were sheltered by Jersey residents until the liberation. The article describes the activities of these helpers and the rudimentary network of safe houses they created, as well as comparing their motives with those of the rescuers of Jews in occupied Europe. It ends by outlining reasons for the neglect of this episode of British wartime history and suggests the adoption of a comparative approach as the best way towards an understanding of the possibilities and limitations of resistance in the Channel Islands.