The Evacuation - 80th Anniversary
To mark the 80th anniversary of the WWII mass evacuation of Alderney Visit Alderney along with with Eye Film held a live onlive chat with some of the evacuees and an Alderney prisoner of war.
Charlie Gauvain the director of Eye Films documentary 'The Evacuation' lead the discussion as we found out more about this dark period in Alderney's history.
This is the first film of a series of three documentaries, a crowdfunded project about our island's WWII story, the darkest period in Alderney’s modern history.
THE EVACUATION
The Evacuation begins in the days prior to the 23rd June 1940 and follows the Alderney island evacuees as they reminisce on their emotional and sometimes frightening journey from their homeland to their new lives as Channel Island refugees on the British mainland.
THE WAR YEARS
The War Years was the hardest film to make in the series, which meant it was the last one created. Finished in 2018, the film discovered more about the little known fact that Alderney housed the only concentration camp on British soil. This documentary looked to explore what really happened during the traumatic war years and the affect it had on the survivors and the island since.
THE HOMECOMING
After spending over five years on mainland Britain, on December 15th 1945 the Alderney islanders finally began to return home. On their return they found their homeland changed forever. The island had been ransacked and looted, not just by Germans, and the film follows the impacts of this initial shock and the subsequent struggles to rebuild their homes and their community.
