STOKE-ON-TRENT, ENGLAND—According to a Live Science report, researchers led by Caroline Sturdy Colls of Staffordshire University investigated the site of Sylt, the forced labor camp built by the Nazis on the Channel Island of Alderney in 1942. Designed to hold 100 to 200 people, the camp was first used to detain political prisoners and then as a concentration camp. By 1943 more than 1,000 people were imprisoned at the camp. The Nazis closed the camp in 1944 and systematically destroyed many of its records. The researchers surveyed the site with remote-sensing technology and examined the surviving vegetation-covered structures. They found that the prisoners’ barracks offered only five feet of space per person, and would have offered little protection from wind and cold, in contrast to buildings occupied by Nazi guards, which were constructed with reinforced concrete and stone to withstand air raids. Mass graves on the island are thought to contain the remains of at least 700 people who died at Sylt. To read about a Nazi German weather station built on an island in 1943, go to "The Third Reich's Arctic Outpost."
