Occupier's defiant rector remembered

Monday 19 January 2015

A St Saviour Rector and 20 of his fellow Islanders who died during the Holocaust will be commemorated at the first event of this year's 70th anniversary of the Liberation.

For the first time the annual Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony on 27 January will see the Island’s Dean laying a wreath in memory of Canon Clifford Cohu who died at the hands of the Germans.

Canon Cohu, who was born in Guernsey, was also the hospital chaplain and a popular member of the clergy who stood defiant against the occupying forces.

He was arrested after cycling down The Parade broadcasting the BBC news and challenging German authority by spreading news on his hospital visit. He was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment for “failing to surrender leaflets and disseminating anti-German news".

It was a crime that usually carried a sentence of just one or two months but he was shipped off the Island and later died in a German camp.

Wreaths will also be laid on behalf of the families of the Spanish Republican Forced Workers, Jersey’s Jewish Congregation, the Island’s gay and lesbian community, St John Ambulance, ex-internees and Jersey Mencap.

Dr Gilly Carr who is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Cambridge is guest speaker at the ceremony. She has been working for many years on the heritage and memory of the Occupation and has a special interest in Channel Island victims of Nazi persecution.

She said: “When the Holocaust is remembered in the Channel Islands, one of the key groups we think about is the political prisoners – the circa 250 people who were deported to Nazi prisons and concentration camps for committing offences against the occupying authorities. Drawing on unpublished testimonies written to claim compensation in the mid-1960s, I will be talking about their experiences in prisons and camps.

“I will examine the way that Channel Islanders supported each other during their ordeal, forgetting inter-island rivalry, and fought to keep each other alive. I will talk about the ongoing fight to keep that memory alive in the decades after the war, exploring how Islanders helped each other claim compensation from the Germans in the mid-1960s.”

The Dean of Jersey, the Very Rev Bob Key will give the closing address.

The ceremony, part of the national commemoration, takes place at 1 pm in the Occupation Tapestry Gallery at the Maritime Museum on the New North Quay.

Holocaust Memorial Day remembers the millions who were murdered in the Holocaust and subsequent genocides, and to challenge hatred and persecution in the British Isles today.