​​The site was initially a transit camp for German troops posted in Jersey - Jersey diarist, Leslie Sinel, recorded the transition: ‘Although a guard was on the door, the manager was allowed to go in and out and he saved the china and glass, the grand piano and the carpets. The Germans, however, robbed all they could, especially electrical fittings, and used to swill the ballroom floor like the deck of a ship!’

​Belgian worker, Emile Boydens, an early inhabitant of the camp, later recalled: ‘They marched us through the streets of the town to the General Hospital, took us around the back and ordered us to strip…They put all our clothes and belongings onto a lorry and sent them to be deloused. When they were returned to us, we found that they had been steamed so much that they were almost burnt and were full of big brown blotches.’ A more permanent delousing facility was later built on People’s Park, behind Lager Seeckt, after a typhoid outbreak which coincided with the arrival of the Soviet slave workers in August 1942. Unsurprisingly foreign workers were banned from civilian hairdressers.

​Emile was encamped at Lager Seeckt for six weeks, unloading timber and bags of cement from barges. The prestigious sprung Canadian birch dance floor then occupied several hundred workers in double-decker bunk beds. Emile recalled: ‘I’ll go up to the balcony. I’m not staying down below, it’s full of rats in there. I could see the rats when I was upstairs, from the balcony, looking down. The West Park Pavilion. And I tell you what, to go to the toilet you had to stand on it. To go to the urinals, you had to have top boots, it was so filthy. That’s how we lived in those days, oh yeah, and I went through it.’

​It appears the workers made the best of the unpleasant conditions, even staging an impromptu musical concert for the benefit of civilians in the forecourt of Lager Seeckt on 16 May 1943.

​On 28 June 1944, large numbers of workers arrived in Jersey from the Channel Island of Alderney, including Poles and Soviets, amongst whom there were Jews. With many dressed in blue and white striped concentration camp uniforms, and in pitiable condition, they were led by armed guard to several locations including Lager Seeckt. The next day, all were taken to France, to an unknown fate.​