Bauleitung Julius – Former Organisation Todt Headquarters in Jersey

Occupation veteran Joe Mière, whose family lived at 25, Midvale Road during the war years, remembered looking out of the window to see Jersey Police vans arrive from which slave workers were unloaded. These poor workers were Soviet fugitives from their labour camps who had been apprehended. They were handed over to OT staff who ‘kicked and hit them with long batons all the way down the basement steps. You did not have to wait long before dreadful screams came from number 19 as the brutal OT beat up the recaptured men and women in the basement.’

Mrs. Maria Brock, who then lived at 9 Cleveland Row, St Helier, worked as an interpreter for the OT from June 1942 – much of her work dealt with the foreign labourers in Jersey. She recalled: 

‘My office was at 17 Midvale Road. Next door, No.19, on the ground floor, was the office of the O.T. Police. Almost every day Russians were brought here to be questioned. They were filthy and covered with vermin. It was impossible to go near them because of this. They were beaten in there. I know this because I have seen them when they came out. They were bruised and red about the head. The interpreter who used to be there with them, Alexis Velichowsky, told me that they were hit with sticks there. 

Also in my house, immediately opposite my door, was the office of Prontfuhrer Helmuth Schuster. He was in charge of all the O.T. camps. He was Hauptsturmführer of the S.A., [Nazi paramilitary] at least, that is what he signed himself. The more important cases respecting the Russians were taken to him for questioning. He used to hit them with sticks. I know this because I heard them screaming. Sometimes Spaniards and Frenchmen were taken there, but mostly they were Russians.’