The eerie tunnels of a German underground military hospital have been converted into Jersey's best and most poignant museum, dedicated to the island's experience under Nazi occupation between 1940 and 1945. Interactive exhibits, interspersed with wartime footage, sound effects and displays of household objects, walk you through the British government's decision not to defend the Channel Islands, privations suffered by locals, the slave labour used to build these tunnels, the deportations of British-born families to Germany, and Jersey's subsequent liberation.
The individual islanders' experiences are, by turn, uplifting and demoralising: the 'Jerry bags' (unattached young women) who fraternised with the Germans and were derided for it; the known Nazi collaborators who gleefully informed on their neighbours, some of whom died in Nazi concentration camps as a result; the courageous individuals who rebelled by hiding forbidden radios and listening to the BBC, or showing kindness to Eastern European slave labourers by feeding or hiding them. Above all, the museum poses the question: what would you have done, had you been in their shoes?
There's a war-themed Escape Room, too.
