Schloss Wurzach

In the early hours of 16 September 1942 there was a knock on the door of ten-year-old Gloria Webber's home in Jersey. The caller was a local official with bad news. Gloria, her parents and four younger children were all on a list of Jersey civilians to be deported to Germany on the direct orders of Hitler. Gloria and her siblings, with hundreds of other Jersey children, spent the next years of their childhood interned in an old castle in the south of Germany, called Schloss (the German for castle) Wurzach. The island of Jersey lies off the coast of Normandy and could not be defended after the fall of France. The Germans invaded and occupied the island in June 1940. The deportation of British civilians from Jersey by the Germans is a little-known part of World War II history. The deported Jersey islanders were given only hours to close up their homes and organise their affairs and were allowed to take only what they could carry. After a gruelling three-day rail journey across France and Luxemburg to the far reaches of south Germany near the Austrian border, and a short stay in an old barracks, they arrived at their internment camp. Schloss Wurzach was a grand baroque palace built in the eighteenth century by one of Germany's noble families. But by World War II it had fallen on hard times and was used as a prison camp. The schloss was cold, damp, in poor condition, and very dirty. The internees were horrified by what they found. No arrangements had been made to accommodate women and children and sanitation was inadequate. Gloria's mother had the herculean task of keeping her young family fed, clothed, clean, healthy and happily occupied, when everything was scarce and with absolutely no modern conveniences. Twelve of the islanders died in Wurzach during their detention and are buried in the town; others suffered fractured lives. This short book recalls Gloria's childhood experience and is illustrated with vivid pictures of camp life painted by her father during their confinement using paints from Red Cross parcels. It also describes how she and other internees returned to Germany in later life to celebrate their liberation with the people of Wurzach, showing there can be reconciliation and friendship between former enemies.