In 1939, the Grouville Butlin Holiday camp was taken over by the military authorities, surrounded with barbed wire, and converted into an internment camp to house nationals of German, Austrian and, eventually, Italian origin who had been working in Jersey in the hotel industry. In 1939 the "concentration" camp did not was a place where people were "concentrated". 

The Germans were quick to free their fellow countrymen and allies in July 1940 after the invasion of Jersey. The camp then stood empty until December 1941, when it was once again occupied, this time by Spanish Republicans who had been brought to Jersey as forced labourers to work on the fortifications, under the guard of the Organization Todt. With a wicked sense of humour, the Spaniards named the camp Lager Franco.