Evacuation of civilians from the Channel Islands in 1940 one suitcase. The Lieutenant Governor of Jersey and Lieutenant Governor of Guernsey left their islands on board ships on 21 June 1940, the day France surrendered. Ships urgently needed to evacuate soldiers from France in Operation Ariel, were diverted to help civilians in the Channel Islands. Marshal Philippe Pétain requested an armistice on 17 June and on 19 June nearby Cherbourg was captured by German forces. 25 ships took people from Guernsey on 21 June alone, ships like the SS "Viking", built 1905, served as HMS "Vindex" until 1918. Requisitioned in 1939 as a troopship, she transported 1,800 schoolchildren from
History of the Jews in Guernsey identified in Guernsey and Sark Marianne Grunfeld, born in Poland in 1912, had studied horticulture at the University of Reading before going to work on a farm in Guernsey. She was identified in April 1942 as Jewish. Theresia Steiner, an Austrian, non-practising Jew, who had come to the Islands from England and become trapped in the Islands by the invasion as she had been detained as an alien, amongst 30 enemy aliens who were arrested and detained in June 1940. She didn't have a UK visa to go to the UK as required for immigrants from Germany and Austria (from