Take a look back at our tour to Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney, which marked 80 years since the end of World War II
Last week, JR Tours set off on a trip to the Channel Islands to mark the end of World War II. Eighty years ago, on 8 May, Germany acquiesced and signed the German Instrument of Surrender, a legal document ending the war in Europe. However, it wasn’t until the following day, 9 May, that British officers arrived in Jersey and Guernsey, and 16 May that they took Alderney, liberating the islands from German rule and finalising the surrender.
On the tour, we discovered the complex wartime history and stunning landscapes of the archipelago: visiting Alderney, the site of forced labour and concentration camps; Jersey War Tunnels, dug deep into the hillside by slave workers from nations across Europe; and the recently laid Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) commemorating victims of Nazi persecution, among many other sites. We also spent time with local Jewish communities on the Islands and were delighted to be invited to Friday night service and dinner at Jersey Synagogue.
Commemorating the wartime Jewish experience was a key part of our tour and we visited the archive, grave and home of resistance activists Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, and produced a staged reading – the Guernsey debut no less – of Theresa, Julia Pascal’s play about a Jewish woman from the Channel Islands who was handed over to the Nazis by local authorities.
To offer a glimpse of the tour, we’ve compiled a gallery of photos submitted by subscribers who attended the trip. Click the images below to browse. If you’d like to attend a future JR tour or short break, head to our tours and events pages.
