Pictured: Jill Chubb and Ollie Guillou earlier this year, in the build up to the podcasts launch.

With the 80th anniversary of Liberation just around the corner, and a notable story within the family, podcast producer Ollie Guillou has documented his gran’s early memories from inside the Biberach Internment camp.

Jill Chubb was among the 1,000 people deported from the Channel Islands during the German Occupation.

Having shared her memories with her grandson, they’ve now been preserved for all to share via Mr Guillou’s podcast series. And the pair will be speaking at the upcoming Guernsey Literary Festival too.

Biberach an der Riß, the journey there, and the nightmares that humans created

Just over 1,000 people from across the Channel Islands were deported from their homes during the Occupation, with the German forces demanding the removal of any non-locally born residents.

The order included the deportation of whole families in cases where one of the parents was from England.

Mrs Chubb was amongst the deportees and she can recall arriving in St Malo, boarding a train that took her family across France and Luxembourg, to a the camp in Dorsten.

From this camp the men, women and children were transported by train in a 36-hour journey to Biberach.

“I was a week into my third birthday,” said Mrs Chubb. “The first thing I knew about going away was my mom said we were on holiday. We ended up in the hold of a cargo ship, and we sat down in the hole. They pulled the hatch down. We sat on hay, and I remember smelling the lamps that they had down there, very rough weather, and then we got to France.

“Well I know it was France now, but we landed somewhere, and the next thing I remember is being in a place called Dorsten, which is in industrial Germany. As Ollie knows, I could never go back there. It was a kind of transit camp where they decided where they can send people.”

The horrors that people had to endure were wide ranging, as is the content of the podcast covering Mrs Chubb’s specific story.

She recalls things she witnessed as a young child, like people forced to cook and eat hedgehogs, being told at the time “that’s what you do to survive”.

Pictured: A drawing of Biberach by one of those kept prisoner behind its fences.

Conditions in Biberach were tough to say the least, with families often split up, and the deportees facing ongoing hardship until their Liberation in 1945.

In the years that followed, people began to learn of the horrors that the deportees had faced.

In 1997, the Guernsey Deportees Association formed, and earlier this month a ‘Framework of Friendship Arrangement’ was agreed, formalising the good relationship between the island and town.

Her grandson told Express that Mrs Chubb has personally found forgiveness for the German people, and the toll their army had inflicted on the Channel Islands, Europe, and the world as a whole.

Sharing stories

Telling the tales of what she, her family, and the other deportees went through has had an impact on Mrs Chubb, eight decades later.

“I felt a great release,” she said.

“I couldn’t talk about it till I was about 70, just because you sort of bury it, you know? Then when I started talking, I felt a lot better, and I think that’s what I was meant to do. I was meant to talk about it, and tell people about it, the experiences I had and felt, and my memories as a little girl of three. We were there from 1942 to ’45 so that’s my formative years!

“I think it’s made a heck of a difference, and I believe that sharing it with Ollie, because he’s my grandson, made it doubly easy for me to talk, because we have that bond, to share exactly what I was feeling.

“I’m blessed to have such a grandson, and that’s all I can say. I think Ollie will spread the word very well, when I’m not here, probably it will still go on, but I wanted to do that before I pop my socks!”

Pictured: Indemnity cards for Jill Chubb’s mother and father, and a small bible excerpt that her mother kept with her during her time in Biberach.

The series of podcasts featuring Mrs Chubb is being released across all the usual platforms on 23 April 2025.

Both Mrs Chubb and Mr Guillou will then be in St Peter Port for a sold out talk taking place on Saturday 26 April, at Guille-alles Library as part of the island’s Literary festival. 

“With the Guernsey Deportees Association, with everybody aging, with very few members left, there is this amazing connection that you’ve made with Germany and the people in Biberach there, but there is a risk that connection could fade and fizzle over time, if these memories aren’t kept alive, because people will forget why there is that connection in the first place!” said Mr Guillou.

“I think there’s so much that you don’t know about your grandparents. There is such a rich history there that so few people are willing to spend the time to unpack, and so many people just see their grandparents as a bit boring, or that they’ve they haven’t got as much to offer, because they’re older. 

“It’s actually the opposite. They’ve got a wealth, they’ve got double, triple the life experiences that you’ve had. And if you don’t spend the time to talk about it or unpack that with them…people so, so easily just drift through life without ever learning.”

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