Discourse and Defiance Under Nazi Occupation: Guernsey, Channel Islands, 1940-1945 (44 page)

Marianne Grunfeld's path to Guernsey was somewhat different and actually took more determined effort. She was born in Poland and had traveled to England in 1937 to study horticulture at Reading University. It was through an agricultural magazine that Marianne was connected to E. H. Ogier, a sixty-five-year-old farmer in St. Sampson who was seeking replacement for a worker who had joined the British forces. At first, Ogier's request for a work permit to bring Marianne to Guernsey was declined. The Bailiff was concerned about violating policies designed to prevent an influx of alien farm laborers to the Island. Armed with a glowing letter of recommendation from a woman on the
London Times
editorial staff, who happened to be a friend of Marianne's mother, Ogier prevailed. Marianne came to Guernsey in early May 1940 to begin work and registered as an alien.
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After the Germans arrived, one of their earliest requirements was a list of all resident aliens, including information on each person's nationality and religion. Because of their known status as resident aliens, Therese, Auguste, and Marianne appeared on this list of 407 names. It is interesting that the States provided all the information the Germans requested, with the notable exception of religion, an early indication of their use of selective compliance.
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Narrowing this list considerably, Dr. Brosch ordered Police Inspector Sculpher to contact all Germans, Austrians, and Italians on the list. They were to come for an interview at the Feldkommandantur on October 21.
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Three days later came “The (First) Order relating to Measures against the Jews,” registered on October 23, 1940, in the Royal Courts of Guernsey and published in the local press. This First Order attempted to define what it meant to be Jewish according to the German standpoint, and required those falling within the criteria to register with the inspector of police in Guernsey.
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Inspector Sculpher was informed separately by the Bailiff that the Feldkommandantur had designated the inspector's office as the location for registration, and therefore, Sculpher would have to provide by October 29 a list of the Jews who registered. Although Sculpher had been aliens officer before the Occupation, this was a very different task; the only saving grace was that any Jews in the Island would have to step forward voluntarily to register themselves. Four people appeared at the office in response to the order, among them Therese Steiner and Auguste Spitz. The other two women who came to register were Elisabet Duquemin, a woman born in Vienna and married to Henry Duquemin, a Guernseyman, and Elda Brouard, born in Florence and a widow of a British citizen. Both women listed their religion as Church of England.
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This First Order, defining the degrees of what it was to be Jewish and requiring Jews to register, was only the first of a series of Orders against the Jews in the Channel Islands. These early orders were promulgated by the Germans only four months into the Occupation, at a time when the Controlling Committee was still finding its feet, and when most interactions behind the scenes were oral. Therefore, what exists from this vital period are formal letters to the Germans, and documents produced by the Germans detailing events from their standpoint. To say that such documents are sanitized versions of the public transcript would be an understatement, because the Germans in charge of the Island were trying to fulfill the requirements of Hitler in the area of his great obsession, the treatment of the Jews.

To have any sense of what may have happened in the hearing where members of the Royal Court were required to register this first key Order against the Jews, we have to turn to Sherwill's unpublished memoirs. This is a poor instrument, because this document was written in the 1960s and based on the memories of an older man who now knew the ultimate outcome of all his actions (positive or negative). Still, there are insights here about his reasoning that appear to make sense. First, Sherwill does not claim to have stepped forward to protest the registration of this First Order, although he was present and a senior advisor to the Court. He treats his own silence as something of which he was “ashamed,” not because it would have made any substantive difference but because “a vital principle was at stake.” Instead, he uses his own failings as a means to highlight the bravery of Abraham Lainé, who “openly and categorically refused his assent and stated his grave objections to such a measure.”
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Why did Sherwill see this order as merely an issue of principle, and not as a real threat to actual people? Sherwill claimed in his memoirs that he believed all the Jewish residents of Guernsey had evacuated before the Occupation, and this tragically incorrect notion he remembered as having been “conveyed to the Bailiff and Jurats in private, as they assembled for the sitting.” The belief that the Orders against the Jews “would harm no one on the Island”
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because any resident Jews had evacuated in advance of the Germans' approach was a mistaken notion shared by others. On October 29, 1940, Rev. Ord wrote, “The anti-Jewish laws have now been promulgated here. Thank God the few we had are safely in England, including the kindly Dr. Montague. With grim humor the Order forbids Jews to re-enter Occupied Territory if they have already fled therefrom!…Every Jew must register.”
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One reason that Sherwill and others believed that all Jews were safely off Guernsey may well have been the prominence of Dr. Montague and his evacuation. Ken Lewis attached to his diary a copy of a letter sent by Ambrose Sherwill with Dr. Montague when he evacuated in 1940. Ken was aware that Dr. Montague was Jewish and “therefore liable to persecution by the Germans.” Sherwill's letter read, in part:

The bearer of this letter, Dr. W. J. Montague is for racial reasons being directed to proceed to England and not to return until after the cessation of hostilities. I much regret losing him for he is a very able doctor, a close personal friend and a man of the most sterling character. He had volunteered to remain regardless of the consequences to himself. Will you please arrange that he be given an opportunity to make a report on the medical aspect of the whole matter.
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The fact that Sherwill and Dr. Montague were close friends, and the special favor of writing a letter of introduction, explains why the doctor's evacuation would loom large in Sherwill's mind. Dr. Montague was truly beloved in Guernsey. When word came of his death in England in 1944, it was widely noted, and a memorial service was held in his honor.
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Perhaps Sherwill and others' initial belief that these were symbolic, toothless laws—simply because no one remained that they could harm—is understandable. Dr. Montague was not the only prominent Jewish Islander to evacuate; others joined him, including Louis Cohen, Mr. and Mrs. William Middlewick, and David Rudnidsky.
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Even had Sherwill, for some reason, perused the enemy aliens list from before the Occupation, there was no indication of the religion of those listed. Therese and Auguste were not prominent citizens, but single foreign women living and working quietly at the hospital; Marianne was an agricultural worker tucked away on a farm. They were among the other foreign women living and working in the Island. Elisabet Duquemin and Elda Brouard were, according to their later registration
information, practicing Anglicans. In a population of nearly 25,000, these five women would have been easy to overlook. Had they been aware that any Jews remained in Guernsey, perhaps more of the jurats would have joined Lainé in making an oral objection to these orders, not that it would have mattered.

The German record of the Royal Court simply omits any reference to Lainé's protest and presumably would have cleansed the public transcript of any other objections. While it is possible that Sherwill, our only alternative to the German official record, made up this story of Lainé's principled refusal, this is highly unlikely. Sherwill tells it as a story of his own failure to speak, and as a regret that he would always have in hindsight, at least for its symbolic value. He was convinced that his speaking out would have been no more effective than Lainé's in preventing the orders. Also, his reasoning for not speaking, that he was particularly “anxious at that time to avoid a collision with the Germans,” rings true. Nicole and Symes had surrendered two days previously, and Sherwill knew himself to be on thin ice.
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It often sounds from some accounts that Inspector Sculpher, when ordered to turn in the names of Jews in Guernsey, went to ferret out any hidden Jews who might have remained. Instead, he merely turned in the list of four people in Guernsey who came in and registered voluntarily. On this list, Brouard and Duquemin are clearly listed as Church of England. Dr. Brosch was not satisfied with Sculpher's report, because the Germans were aware of Julia Brichta, a Hungarian woman who had been in and out of various types of trouble and was known to the police. When ordered to investigate Julia Brichta, the inspector reported that Brichta was now a cook employed by the Germans and that she attended the Church of England. Dr. Brosch considered Sculpher's report to be evasive (which it was) and required him to ask directly whether Brichta was of pure Aryan blood. Sculpher questioned her and reported that she had no known Jewish background.
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And thus, the first of the Orders against the Jews came to Guernsey. Far from sharing in anti-Semitism, the response by the diarists to these laws show a clear contempt for this aspect of the German mentality.
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Winifred Harvey described how all the regulations against Jews “made me feel quite sick.” There was no uncertainty in her mind about who was responsible. She described how they “had to be passed and registered by the Royal Court,” clearly indicating the involuntary nature of the jurats' role, but they were “signed by the Commandant of the German forces in France.”
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In late November, she would describe a period with a “new Bekanntmachung every other day, with death penalties attached.” Now the identity cards were “stamped with Swastikas.” And amid all of this bad news, still more “new anti-Jew orders are out.”
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In Winnie's account, we can see how the Orders against the Jews were subsumed by small floods of onerous new regulations. At this point everyone had to fill out a form to get an identity card, and one piece of information required was each person's relationship to British officers. News also came out at this time that, like France, Guernsey was now subject to trial by military law. Amid all of these orders, ones that required registration by everyone, the Orders against the Jews still stood out. If the Germans hoped to numb the Islanders and have these particular orders pass unremarked, they failed in the attempt. Although many forms of racial stereotyping were widespread in England and America at this time, the constant flood of anti-Semitic propaganda in the
Press
highlighted the Germans' racial hatred as something peculiar to Nazi ideology. Ambrose Robin described this propaganda as “becoming more and more strained and stupid. Their outpourings against Jews alone are sufficient to place the German nation in a category of racial maniacs.”
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The Germans seemed to believe that
repeated anti-Semitic diatribes or screenings of
Jew Suss
—a film rather like
Birth of a Nation
in its portrayal of a damsel in distress struggling to flee from intended rape, although in this instance the assailant is Jewish rather than black—would bring Islanders around to embrace the anti-Jewish orders. In Rev. Ord's estimation, this proved to be another German failure. On November 28, 1940, he wrote, “With regard to the Order against the Jews, there is a feeling of relief that it falls flat in Guernsey. Decent people look upon it as the result of diseased imagination, and think of it with fathomless contempt.”
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Julia Brichta, or Julia Barry following her marriage in 1942 to Jeremiah Barry, was the one case where anonymous letters denouncing her to the Germans contained references to her supposed Jewish heritage. On September 16, 1943, the Feldkommandantur received a letter signed “Fair Play for All,” which denounced numerous suspected black-marketeers. The letter referred to “Mrs. Barry, a Hungarian Jew, just married for a business affair to escape your jurisdiction on Jews, carries on a very large bartering trade at her house in Mill Street.” Other anonymous letters also denounced Brichta and her work in the black market, including one dated September 30, 1940, which read, “She is truly a bad tongued Jew and an awful cheat.”
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These references to her Jewish background seem geared toward the prejudice of the recipient, an attempt to cause Brichta trouble in terms the Germans would understand. Brichta was known in Guernsey as the “Black Market Queen” and was finally caught in January 1944—after numerous searches of her house—and deported to France.
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She ended up at Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, but survived the war. These two letters show that at least some, whether broadly anti-Semitic or not, were willing to utilize the Germans' racial hatred in order to rid themselves of a troublesome woman. But there is no sign that anti-Semitism was part of the average Islander's makeup.

Ord even had a little fun with the German censor and the ban on all things Jewish. On a November Sunday in 1943, the reverend announced, “with some show of innocence,” that the next Sunday they would “listen to Mendelssohn's ‘Hymn of Praise,’ which is the work of a great master known the world over. I am not however permitted to tell you who wrote it.” And Ord ended his account with a cheerful “that went home,” and enjoyed the crowd that packed the church the following week.
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