A forensic investigation done in 1945 by the British Army concluded that between 340 and 389 people died on Alderney, an English Channel Island, during the Second World War.
Dr. Robert Jan van Pelt, a professor at Waterloo Engineering's School of Architecture, helped review the evidence to determine the most accurate death count possible. The findings, while higher than the original, put to bed conspiracy theories claiming the true death toll was in the thousands.
About 10 years ago amateur historians began to speculate that the number of victims on Alderney might have been as high as 40,000, and that since 1945, the British Government had engaged in a nefarious cover-up, refusing to put the German perpetrators on trial.
Newspapers proved willing to publish these speculations, creating extreme anxiety amongst the island's 2,000 inhabitants who were told they lived on cursed soil, now nicknamed “Little Auschwitz.”
In July 2023, a panel of Second World War archeologists and academic historians from Britain, Germany, France and Canada reviewed the evidence and concluded that between 7,600 and 8,000 voluntary, forced and slave labourers were brought to Alderney during the war—already making the claim of 40,000 victims impossible—and it raised the death toll to between 641 and 1,134 people.
Van Pelt was the only North-American asked to join the panel.
Go to Uncovering the truth behind the Alderney death count for the full story.