Qualla: History of the Jews in Guernsey

History of the Jews in Guernsey: Introduction

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Man vyi, Public domain. The plaque on Guernsey carries three names: Therese Steiner, Marianne Grunfeld, Auguste Spitz. They were a dental nurse, a horticulture graduate, and an Austrian-born refugee, and they were all murdered at Auschwitz in 1942 after being deported from a Channel Island whose government chose, when it had the choice, to cooperate. There was never a synagogue on Guernsey. The Jewish community was small and easily counted. That is part of how the failure happened. It is also why their names need to be said: there are not very many of them, and there is no excuse for forgetting any.

Image: Man vyi | Public domain

History of the Jews in Guernsey: Before the Occupation

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Jews appear in the Guernsey record sparsely and early. A man called Abraham, described in 1277 as a London Jew from La Gelnseye, suggests the island had at least passing Jewish presence in the medieval period. In 1482 Edward Brampton, a converted Portuguese Jew who had been knigh...

Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

History of the Jews in Guernsey: The Order That Should Not Have Been Obeyed

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Man vyi, Public domain. The First Order Against the Jews was issued on the Channel Islands on 23 October 1940, two days after the Jersey Evening Post ran an advertisement instructing all Jews to identify themselves. The Nuremberg Race Laws were absorbed into Channel Islands legal codes. The bailiffs of ...

Image: Man vyi | Public domain

History of the Jews in Guernsey: Three Names

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Man vyi, Public domain. Therese Steiner was twenty-six years old, born in Austria, a qualified dental nurse who had come to England as a refugee and ended up working at the Castel Hospital in Guernsey when the war stranded her there. After eighteen months she made the mistake of going to the German auth...

Image: Man vyi | Public domain

History of the Jews in Guernsey: What Is Owed

Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Man vyi, Public domain. Sir Geoffrey Rowland, Bailiff of Guernsey from 2005 to 2012, has said the island government was powerless to stop the deportations because of the size of the German garrison. Historians have pointed out that not every order was carried out so promptly, that bailiffs in other occu...

Image: Man vyi | Public domain