Meet Bob Le Sueur. An ordinary man and his extraordinary life in occupied Jersey

In 2022, tributes poured in for Bob Le Sueur, a hero during the Nazi occupation of Jersey in World War Two. The historian, who died aged 102, was best known for saving many escaped Russian slave labourers during the occupation. 

His friend Chris Stone said he was an "incredibly generous person" who spent his life helping others. Mr Stone, of BBC Radio Jersey, helped him write his wartime memoir "Growing Up Fast", which was published in 2020. 

Robert Winter Le Sueur was working as a young insurance clerk when the German soldiers of 216th Infantry Division came marching into St Helier on that hot July day in 1940, the first day of the Occupation. And he was still working at his job in May 1945 when the islands were liberated. 
He was lucky to be alive, for during those five years of occupation, Robert, or Bob as he was popularly known, had taken it upon himself, in the name of common decency, to provide help and find refuge for many wretched victims of German oppression and cruelty. 

There was one man in particular that Bob helped: he was called Feodor Polycarpovitch Burriy, known as ‘Bill’ because, Bob told us, the good people of St Ouen, in which parish he was first hidden, had great difficulty in pronouncing any one of his three Russian names. 

Had Bob been caught helping a Russian slave-worker, he might have been imprisoned, transported to a concentration camp or even shot but, despite this, he persisted in helping Bill and as many fugitives from vicious German captivity as was within his power. 

Riding about the island on his rickety bicycle with lengths of hosepipe replacing proper tyres, Bob marshalled his helpers, organised safe houses and kept a kindly and caring eye on all involved in the perilous enterprise.

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