FRONTSTAMMLAGER (FRONTSTALAG) 111
The Germans established Frontstalag 111 on July 22, 1940, and deployed it in Drancy, in the northeastern suburbs of Paris (map 2). It functioned as a transit camp for French prisoners of war (POWs). The Wehrmacht requisitioned a former French army barracks as well as a low-cost housing project that had been built between 1931 and 1934. This vast U-shaped building, called the Cité de la Muette (city of the mute) was a logical choice for a detention center because the shape made it easy to guard. Frontstalag 111 received field post number (Feldpostnummer) 13 492 between April 28 and September 14, 1940. It was struck between July 15, 1942, and January 24, 1943. The Germans dissolved the camp on August 13, 1941.
Very little documentation exists on the early phase of the camp. On October 11, 1940, an informal inspection reported [End Page 139] that 4,849 prisoners were held at Frontstalag 111, the vast majority of them (3,346) North African colonial POWs. The second largest group were soldiers from metropolitan France (1,226), who were almost certainly transferred to Germany in the weeks following this inspection. The camp also held 128 tirailleurs sénégalais (a general term for soldiers from French West Africa, regardless of whether they were actually of Senegalese nationality) as well as 31 prisoners from the French Antilles and 8 from French Indochina. In addition, there were 79 prisoners without registered nationality, who were probably British. Thirty-one of the North Africans claimed to have been detained by mistake, insisting that they were civilian migrant laborers rather than soldiers. The German authorities often arrested “foreign” laborers in France at the end of the 1940 campaign, on the assumption that they were colonial soldiers who had taken on civilian clothes. Most of these workers contacted French aid agencies and obtained release after a couple of months, which is likely what happened to the 31 North Africans in Drancy, because they no longer appear on the notes of an inspection on December 14, 1940. This inspection mentions the presence of 160 black prisoners (most likely tirailleurs sénégalais), 300 French soldiers, and 350 British civilians, probably interned civilians who had been stranded in France.1 According to French government sources, the Germans spread a great deal of pro-Islamic propaganda in this camp, promising independence for Arab countries.2
Frontstalag 111 held very few POWs by the end of 1940, and soon thereafter it was no longer a prisoner camp. In August 1941, the U-shaped building of the Cité de la Muette became a detention center and served as one of the main transit camps for Jews. Because of its initial character as a POW camp, some family members of Jews deported to Drancy and later to Auschwitz contacted the French POW services asking for information about the deported family members—to no avail.
The correspondence concerning the former prisoner of war Jacob Abecassis, who was born on January 15, 1908, in Mascara, in French Algeria, illustrates the confusion between the POW camp and the later transit camp for Jews in Drancy. Abecassis was a North African Jew residing in Paris. He had served in the French army, was captured by the Germans on June 17, 1940, and was released from captivity on December 19, 1941, probably as part of the liberation of 10,000 North African prisoners from the Frontstalags on that day. On April 3, 1942, however, the Gestapo arrested Abecassis in Paris because he had not registered himself as a Jew. The Germans interned Abecassis in Tourcelles and then sent him on to Drancy, where he arrived on April 13, 1942. The Scapini Mission, prompted by inquiries from relatives, found that the Germans had sent him to a camp near Krakau (today: Kraków, Poland) with a name similar to “Husswicht” (which was, in reality, Auschwitz) in June 1942 and asked the Armed Forces High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, OKW) about his whereabouts. Ambassador Georges Scapini pointed out that according to French police records this man had committed no crime. Scapini urged the OKW to ensure that he would at least be transferred to a POW camp, so that he could communicate with his relatives. No response seems to have arrived.3
