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Islanders will be remembering the thousands forced to work by the Germans during the Occupation a little earlier this year.
The Slave Workers' Commemoration will take place at lunchtime on Liberation Day instead of the traditional starting time of 3 pm so that nobody misses the big event in People’s Park.
Commander Igor Elkin, Assistant Naval Attaché to the Russian Embassy in London, and Counsellor Valery Dougan Deputy Head of Mission at the Belorus Embassy in London will be in Jersey for the special commemoration and will lay wreaths in memory of all their countrymen who toiled and died in the Island during the Occupation.
The ceremony will be led by the Lieutenant-Governor, General Sir John McColl. Wreaths will also be laid by the Bailiff, the Chief Minister, the Island’s religious communities, families of forced workers, the Island’s French, German and Belgian Consuls, the Parish of St Helier and many other organisations and individuals.
The event is being organized by Gary Font, the son of Spanish Republican forced worker Francisco Font who made Jersey his home after the war.
He said: “With the special events and changes to the Liberation Day programme because of the 70th anniversary and the Royal visit, I was happy to re-arrange the time of the ceremony.
“I want to do whatever is possible so that those who lived through the Occupation, who knew and helped forced and slave workers, and the families of those workers who made the Island their home after the war, are able to attend.”
The ceremony remembers all the Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Spanish Republicans, North Africans, French, Jews and Belgians who were forced to work to turn the Channel Islands into fortresses as part of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall.
It starts at midday in the grounds of the crematorium at Westmount.
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