The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945

The Wehrmacht created Frontstalag 122 on July 9, 1940. From August 1940 until February 1941, the camp was deployed to Chaumont, Haute-Marne. From February to June 1941, it was located in Dijon, Côte d’Or. Finally, from the end of June 1941 until August 28, 1944, it was located in Royallieu, Compiègne (all map 2). In Compiègne, the camp replaced Frontstalag 170, which had been located there from October to December 1940. Frontstalag 122 received field post number (Feldpostnummer) 23 376 sometime between April 28 and September 14, 1940; the number was struck sometime between July 31, 1942, and February 9, 1943. The Wehrmacht ordered the camp disbanded on March 8, 1944.

American diplomat Jefferson Patterson and army physician Dr. Vance Murray visited Frontstalag 122 in Chaumont on September 17, 1940. The Germans initially kept French prisoners of war (POWs) in a former French artillery barrack outside of town but moved them into infantry barracks in town on the day after the American visit because the Wehrmacht wanted to take over the first site for its own use.

At the time of the American inspection of Frontstalag 122, the conditions in the camp were very good. The maximum capacity of the camp was 10,000. Although the camp had been at full capacity soon after the Armistice (June 22, 1940), there were only 4,090 French and 2 Belgian prisoners in the camp in September 1940. A small number of the French prisoners were colonial soldiers. While many metropolitan French and Belgian soldiers performed agricultural work in the surrounding villages and were housed with the farmers, the colonial soldiers worked inside the camp or on commandos nearby, returning to the main camp every evening. The camp commander was Oberstleutnant Kurt Pelzer. The food supply, with supplemental deliveries of French aid organizations, was good, and the health of the prisoners was very good. The planned new location of the camp in town was smaller, but the American inspectors agreed that the present location was too large for the number of prisoners.¹

Frontstalag 122 moved again in early 1941, this time to Dijon, to the south of Chaumont. In Dijon, the camp occupied two different locations: for a short time (perhaps only a month), it came to Longvic, a suburb of Dijon near the city’s airport, and then it moved to an abandoned fort in Hautevillelès-Dijon, a few kilometers northwest of the city. At the time of the first inspection by the Scapini Mission, on March 20, 1941, the camp held 2,566 prisoners (2,482 metropolitan French and 84 colonial prisoners) and was still under Pelzer’s command. The vast majority of the prisoners were working in small agricultural commandos (three to four men per farm) in the surrounding countryside. The main camp in the fort housed only 130 prisoners (90 metropolitan French and 40 colonial prisoners). The inspector, Dr. Jean Bonnaud, bemoaned above all the poor leisure and entertainment infrastructure in the main camp (inadequate sports facilities, no educational courses, and hardly any games and books). The inspector heard that the large number of escapes had motivated the camp’s recent moves.²

According to a second inspection by the Scapini Mission in May 1941, the shortages in the leisure sector had not improved and the camp received excellent grades in most other categories. There were only 47 prisoners in the fort (40 metropolitan French soldiers and 7 colonial soldiers, all of them Martinicans) and an unknown number on work commandos. The inspector claimed that 2,512 “indigenous” prisoners had been dismissed over the course of the previous month, but this appears unlikely in light of the fact that there had been mostly metropolitan French prisoners in Frontstalag 122 before.³

In an unusual move, the Frontstalag 122 administration relocated to Compiègne, where it ran a site that functioned as a police internment camp (Polizeihaftlager) rather than a POW camp. Between June 1941 and August 1944, more than 54,000 people passed through the camp and more than 40,000 of them were deported to concentration camps in Germany and occupied Poland. More than 20,000 of these deportees perished. Among the deportees were 2,112 Jews, of whom only 51 survived.

The camp in Compiègne occupied a large quadrangle, which was encircled by walls and a wooden fence. Wehrmacht soldiers patrolled the outer perimeter of the camp and the circular road inside the outer walls as well as manning watchtowers from which searchlights illuminated the camp at night. The head of the camp was still Oberstleutnant Pelzer. Some 30 officers and junior officers were stationed in the camp. SSHauptsturmführer Dr. Illers of the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst) also had a role. The two German doctors in the camp were majors, Dr. Buckard and Dr. Fürtwangler.

The camp consisted of three sections (known as Camps A, B, and C) separated by barbed wire. Camp A was for political prisoners, Resistance fighters, and those suspected of subversive activities. Most of the prisoners were French citizens. Many of them were Communists. Often, prisoners who were arrested in reprisal for attacks on German soldiers were held as hostages in Compiègne and shot at Mont Valerien, a [End Page 143] fortress in Paris. Most of the prisoners suspected of subversive activities were deported to concentration camps in Germany such as Dachau, Buchenwald, Ravensbruck, Sachshausen, Mauthausen, and Neuengamme. Apart from French citizens, prisoners in Compiègne included Belgian, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Polish, and Russian nationals. Prisoners were brought to Compiègne from French prisons or from Drancy and were sometimes transferred from Compiègne to Drancy. Camp A consisted of eight buildings (blocks) and included an infirmary, offices, a library, a kitchen and canteen, a chapel, and a small prison.

Camp B was smaller than Camp A. It housed British, American, South American, and Soviet prisoners as well as some of the administrative offices of the internment camp. Russians living in France, including about 180 Jews, were arrested and brought to Compiègne after the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The barracks in which they were housed, bordering on Camp B, came to be known as the Russian camp. Women and children were housed separately from the men. There were two American doctors in the camp. M. Schlissman was appointed chief of the American camp.

On the night of December 12–13, 1941, about 1,000 Jews were brought to Compiègne and housed in Camp C, which became known as the Jewish camp. Of the new arrivals, 743 were French Jews, many of them professionals and distinguished citizens of France, while 300 were foreign Jews, mostly Polish or Russian, many of them workers or artisans, who had been arrested and interned in Drancy in August 1941. They were included in the train to Compiègne to bring the total number of Jewish prisoners to 1,000. Jews were subsequently brought to Compiègne from the internment camps Pithiviers and Beaune-la-Rolande, from Drancy, and from prisons in France.

Prisoners in Camps A and B were forbidden to visit Camp C. At first, the Germans tried to keep the existence of Camp C secret. Prisoners in Camp C were not allowed to write to their families or to receive packages. At the end of February 1942, as a result of pressure from the French Red Cross and the Vichy government, families were allowed to write to prisoners in Camp C and to send them packages of clothing but not food or medications. As of December 1941, the head of Camp C was a German named Kuntze.

During the first months of Camp C’s existence, Russian prisoners in Camp B and Communist prisoners in Camp A sent food to the prisoners there. They also smuggled letters to Camp C. After a kitchen was established in Camp C, the quality and quantity of food declined. Russian and French prisoners could no longer smuggle packages to the camp as the Germans now limited the number and weight of packages they could receive. Many prisoners in Camp C subsequently died from hunger and cold.

Although external work was not obligatory in Compiègne, prisoners had to help clean and maintain the camp and perform chores such as peeling vegetables. Prisoners who volunteered for labor worked outside the camp for Organisation Todt or inside the camp as electricians, warehouse workers, or other specialists. Jews were not allowed to work outside the camp.

Each camp had a chief (doyen) appointed by the Germans. The Germans also appointed heads of blocks, deputy heads of blocks, and heads of barracks rooms, who distributed the food to the prisoners. Since a large percentage of the prisoners in Camp A were Communists, they monopolized the positions in the camp. The doyen of Camp A, Georges Cogniot, who was fluent in German, helped organize the delivery of food to the prisoners in the Jewish camp. In 1943, after the percentage of Communists in the camp had declined, the Germans replaced them with prisoners who held pro-Fascist views. The “police,” whom these prisoners appointed to help maintain order, often beat other prisoners.

Apart from the twice-daily roll call, prisoners had little contact with Germans. From time to time the commandant would make a night inspection and call for a general roll call. The junior officer Erich Jaeger would promenade in the camp with two dogs on a leash and slap the faces of prisoners who did not lift their hats quickly enough.

Conditions were better in Camp B than in Camps A or C. Food was more plentiful, and British and American prisoners received packages from the British and American Red Cross.

On July 6, 1942, Camp C was liquidated. Some 18 Jews remaining in Camp C were transferred to Camp A; 147 Russian Jews were sent to Drancy.

The chief doctor in the camp, Hauptmann Fürtwangler, treated the Jewish internees particularly harshly. He would not provide medication for them and refused to send even those who were seriously ill to the hospital. After a report of terrible conditions in Camp C was sent to German authorities in early 1942, about 30 sick Jews were released. At first, two doctors from Camp A served Camp C. For a brief period, a small infirmary was organized in Camp C by Jewish doctors who were prisoners in the camp. After Camp C was liquidated, prisoner doctors worked in the infirmary in Camp A under Fürtwangler. The infirmary in Camp A was known for the kindness of the doctors and for the good conditions there. Prisoners were given clean sleeping bags, and they could sleep until ten or eleven o’clock in the morning. They received meals at noon and at six o’clock in the evening, a snack at four o’clock in the afternoon and milk several times a day. Doctors offered very weak internees an opportunity to come to the infirmary to regain their strength. Very sick prisoners were sent to the hospital in Compiègne. Doctors struggled with the lack of medication and the reluctance of the German doctor to transfer prisoners to the hospital.

Camp A had a small chapel, with one corner for Catholics, the other for different denominations. There were two masses every day conducted by priests who were themselves prisoners. About 100 people participated. After an attempted escape through a tunnel underneath the chapel, the chapel was closed and religious services were banned for a time. Eventually, the Germans permitted a mass on Sunday without a sermon. Monsignor Theas, the bishop of Montauban, who gave [End Page 144] sermons in the camp in favor of liberty, was eventually arrested by the Germans.

About 120 prisoners escaped from Compiègne in total. Some hid in trucks leaving the camp, others built tunnels or climbed over the barbed wire, and some escaped while outside the camp. Most of the escape attempts failed. In mid-August 1944, the consul general of Sweden in France tried to negotiate an agreement with the Germans to take control of political prisoners in Paris, Compiègne, and Drancy together with the Red Cross, but the SS refused. On August 31, 1944, the last Germans left the city of Compiègne. American troops arrived the following day and liberated the camp.