WWII history: Jersey’s German occupation is the subject of the popular BBC radio four programme, The Reunion, this weekend

2013-09-06 — /travelprnews.com/ — The occupation of Jersey is the subject of the popular BBC radio four programme, The Reunion, this weekend.

The Reunion reunites a group of people intimately involved in a moment of modern history. In this programme, presenter Sue MacGregor, reunites people who endured the difficult period during the German occupation of Jersey, to find out how they look back on it seventy years on.

Jersey Reunited are; Bob Le Sueur, a young insurance clerk at the time, who helped Russian prisoners hide from their German Captors; Leo Harris, a teenager at the beginning of the war, who carried out acts of ‘boys own’ resistance; Michael Ginns, who found himself in an internment camp in Bavaria; Hazel Lakeman, who was also taken off the island and interned in terrible conditions; and John Floyd, one of the few Jersey residents who managed to escape from the island.

David de Carteret, director of Jersey tourism said, “It is good news indeed for Jersey that the occupation is the subject of this very popular programme. There has been a resurgence of interest in WWII history over the last decade and, as a consequence of having been occupied, we have a great deal with which to engage our visitors; members of The Channel Island Occupation Society work tirelessly, and mostly voluntarily, to restore and open up much of our occupation heritage, the Jersey War Tunnels have invested heavily and imaginatively in their site, which features highly on in the itineraries of a wide range of visitors, and Jersey Heritage has invested creatively and significantly in the Occupation Tapestry and more recently in the conversion of WWII sites into self-catering lets, there is so much more …..

We hope that the programme will help to put Jersey in the mind of listeners as a destination to visit in the near future. In conjunction with Jersey War tunnels, we have created an “Occupation Trail” to illustrate the variety and number of sites, including commemorative ones, and make them easy to locate. The programme normally attracts over 400,000 listeners between the two broadcasts and we are especially fortunate as the Jersey programme follows the high profile programme last week which featured those reunited from the scene of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

The 45 minute programme will be first broadcast on BBC Radio Four on Sunday 8th Sept at 11:15 then repeated on Friday 13th Sept at 21:00.