​​The site was named Lager Ehrenbreitstein after a German fortress at Koblenz, Germany. Rooms within the wall of the historic fort were used as barracks, and barrack huts were located in the East Ditch, as seen on Royal Air Force reconnaissance photographs.

​The first workers encamped here in March 1941 were around 100 political prisoners of various nationalities. It’s unclear when the next group of workers arrived, although Spanish Republican forced worker Pasqual Pomar-Bellafont stated many years later that in 1942: ‘…the first deportees to work on this site [Jersey War Tunnels – the German Underground Hospital] were Spanish Republicans, also a group of Polish, Czecho-Slovak and Alsatian Jews…These deportees imprisoned in Fort Regent, which the Germans called ‘Lager Ehrenbreitstein’ were transferred by lorry and worked from 4.00am to 7.00pm.’

​Jersey diarist, Leslie Sinel, recorded that on 18 June 1944, French workers ‘who had been imprisoned at Fort Regent’ were seen escaping precariously down its walls.

​From 1942, Jews arrested around Paris were taken as slave labour to the Channel Island of Alderney. They were held in five camps. One was Lager Sylt, controlled by Nazi SS, and a sub-camp of Neuengamme concentration camp in northern Germany. On 28 June 1944, prisoners from Sylt, being transported back to Europe, arrived in Jersey. Leslie Sinel recorded: ‘The prisoners were taken under armed escort to Fort Regent: some were in a pitiable state, and many were garbed in blue and white striped uniform – Jews, Poles, Russians, and even German political prisoners. There were many Frenchmen among them, and it was estimated that about half the number from Alderney were taken to the Fort. The others including many women, were lodged at some of the larger hotels…About 8.00 p.m. all the morning’s arrivals were taken to the harbour to be taken on to France...Many local people congregated near the harbours, and, when the guards were not looking, threw cigarettes to the men who, in reply, gave the V-sign. The guards treated them very roughly, and harrowing tales of life in the Alderney concentration camp have been told by local workers who returned from that Island.’

​On 3 July 1944, the SS Minotaure, carrying approximately 500 workers, including a number of Jewish forced workers, was torpedoed and sunk by British motor torpedo boats. Jerseyman Denis Le Cuirot who was on board later testified that ‘about half lost their lives when the crowded ship was hit.’