Over 1,000 people died during the Nazi occupation of Alderney in the Channel Islands, more than double the number thought previously, an inquiry will reveal this week.

For decades, official accounts said that 389 of the 4,000 slave labourers shipped by Nazi Germany to the island during the war died.

But an investigation launched last year, led by UK Holocaust envoy Lord Pickles, has found that at least double that number was killed, the Sunday Times reported.

The original death toll of 389 had been arrived at from studying marked graves in the 1960s but the panel of experts led by Lord Pickles has examined archives to arrive at the truer number. The panel is also said to have uncovered why the Nazi perpetrators never stood trial for their crimes.

UK Special Envoy for post-Holocaust Issues Lord Eric Pickles, October 1, 2017 (Credit: Carl Court/Getty Images)

The inquiry describes the atrocities on Alderney as “systematic terrorism”, involving “murder and massacre” and “torture”.

At least four labour camps were built on Alderney in 1941 by Nazi military engineers, with two turned by the SS into concentration camps.

Lord Pickles ordered an inquiry into the atrocities committed in Alderney in the summer of 2023, and began assembling a panel of Holocaust experts. Speaking then, he said: “Numbers matter because the truth matters.”