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Occupation to Liberation

Guernsey Museums & Galleries publishes a range of books, from detailed & specialized monographs to colourful guide books.

New for 2020:  'Occupation to Liberation 1940 to 1945: Guernsey, Sark & Alderney' by Jason Monaghan

This new book has been specially produced to mark this year's 75th anniversary of the Liberation. 

Guernsey Museums & Galleries has published the book written by author Jason Monaghan.  It is illustrated throughout in colour using images and objects from the Guernsey Museum, from which Dr Monaghan retired in September 2019.  The book has been written as an introduction to the Occupation of the Bailiwick. 

Objects and images from the book also feature in a new display at the Guernsey Museum at Candie.  These tell the story of the Occupation from 1940 to Liberation in 1945.   They include treasured toys owned by a child evacuee, a deportee and a child who lived in occupied Guernsey.  There is also a home-made crystal radio set, a patriotic 'V for Victory' badge, wooden bookends carved by a German soldier and a Canadian Red Cross parcel. 

When it was decided in June 1940 that the Channel Islands could not be defended, islanders faced a very different war to Britain.  Whilst almost half were evacuated to England or joined the British armed forces, a slim majority of islanders remained to face the uncertainty of Occupation.  A thousand islanders were deported to internment camps in Germany.  Anyone who defied the Nazis risked arrest, imprisonment, or torture or death in a Nazi prison, labour or concentration camp. 

These different groups of islanders had contrasting experiences, and between Guernsey, Sark and Alderney there is no single story of the Occupation.  The Occupation holds an important place in the minds of islanders and frames the modern history of the Bailiwick of Guernsey. 

The book is available from the Guernsey Museum and other local retailers.  

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