Fort Regent seen from St Helier Harbour

St Helier Harbour can be seen behind, and Fort Regent on the hill in the distance

Soldiers snapped unobserved, August 1940

From late March 1941, around 100 political prisoners of various nationalities were encamped at Fort Regent. The prisoners probably slept in the barrack rooms built into the Fort’s walls, when they weren’t labouring on fortifications and tunnel excavation in St Peter’s Valley.In 1942, Spaniard Pascal Pomar was a forced worker in Jersey. Visiting the Island after the war, Pomar stated:‘…the first deportees to work on this site [Jersey War Tunnels – the German Underground Hospital] were Spanish Republicans, also a group of Polish, Czecho-Slovak and Alsatian Jews…These deportees imprisoned in Fort Regent, which the Germans called ‘Lager Ehrenbreitstein’ were transferred by lorry and worked from 4.00am to 7.00pm.’From 1942, Jews arrested in the Paris area were taken as slave labour to the Channel Island of Alderney. They were held in five camps, one of which was named Lager Sylt. Sylt, which came under control of the Nazi SS, was a sub-camp of Neuengamme concentration camp in northern Germany. On 28 June 1944, prisoners from Sylt, being transported back to Europe, arrived in Jersey. Occupation diarist Leslie Sinel recorded:‘The prisoners were taken under armed escort to Fort Regent: some were in a pitiable state, and many were garbed in blue and white striped uniform – Jews, Poles, Russians, and even German political prisoners. There were many Frenchmen among them, and it was estimated that about half the number from Alderney were taken to the Fort. The others including many women, were lodged at some of the larger hotels…About 8.00 p.m. all the morning’s arrivals were taken to the harbour to be taken on to France...Many local people congregated near the harbours, and, when the guards were not looking, threw cigarettes to the men who, in reply, gave the V-sign. The guards treated them very roughly, and harrowing tales of life in the Alderney concentration camp have been told by local workers who returned from that Island.’On 3 July 1944, the SS Minotaure, carrying approximately 500 workers, including a number of Jewish forced workers, was torpedoed and sunk by British motor torpedo boats. Jerseyman Denis Le Cuirot was on board, and later testified that ‘about half lost their lives when the crowded ship was hit.’