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

The Wehrmacht established Frontstalag 125 on July 19, 1940, and deactivated it on March 16, 1941. Frontstalag 125 received field post number (Feldpostnummer) 25 079 between April 28 and September 14, 1940; the number was struck between February 15 and July 30, 1942.

Frontstalag 125 existed only for a few months in Melun, southeast of Paris (map 2). It functioned as a transit camp for prisoners of war from July to December 1940. No record of camp inspections has survived. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) did receive a summary report about camps in the region of Paris in August 1940 that almost certainly referred to this camp. According to the author of the report, French army physician Dr. Marquezy, the camps in the area of Paris were overcrowded and offered very poor accommodations to approximately 45,000 prisoners, of whom almost a third were colonial prisoners. Initially, the Germans kept thousands unprotected in open fields, later quartering them in tents. Dysentery and other intestinal diseases were rampant. The food and lodging situation quickly improved by August, however, and an increasing number of prisoners were being moved into barracks.¹