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

The Wehrmacht established Frontstalag 132 on July 20, 1940, and disbanded the camp on May 15, 1941, making it the basis of Dulag 132. Frontstalag 132 received field post number (Feldpostnummer) 31 979 between April 28 and September 14, 1940; the number was struck between July 31, 1942, and February 9, 1943.

Frontstalag 132 was an important camp in the first phase of the German occupation of France. In early 1941, it held approximately 10,000 French prisoners, half in Laval (Mayenne) and the other half in Mulsanne (map 1). The camp in Laval was located in the Schneider Barracks (Caserne Schneider). The camp in Mulsanne was also a French barracks, which had been occupied by British troops in 1939 and 1940. After the arrival of German troops in June 1940, Mulsanne was part of Frontstalag 203, which was headquartered in Le Mans, but it was integrated into Frontstalag 132 before April 1941.

In the winter and spring of 1941, the camp in Laval was severely overcrowded. In March 1941, the commander, Major Eckert, wrote to mayors in the surrounding communities asking them to request prisoners for labor.¹ By April 1, 1941, 1,400 prisoners had thus been sent to work commandos, but the camp was still overcrowded and conditions were poor. It had no showers, no library, and only a poorly stocked canteen. At this time, the camp in Laval was holding 4,826 colonial and 100 metropolitan French prisoners. Religious services for Christians and Muslims were well organized. The prisoners performed construction work at a nearby airport and inside the camp, contributing to an improvement of conditions. The camp in Mulsanne held approximately 5,000 prisoners at this time, all colonial soldiers except for 65 metropolitan French soldiers. Many prisoners were assigned to work commandos in the countryside, but the inspector of the Scapini Mission heard that many local farmers did not appreciate having North African prisoners as a labor force. The camp itself offered inadequate accommodations. 900 prisoners had to sleep on the bare floor for lack of mattresses.²

Conditions improved rapidly, however. In May 1941, when the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) visited Laval, the Germans had reduced occupancy at the local camp to 3,459 colonial prisoners (3,112 “men of color,” predominantly North Africans and a few Indochinese, as well as 347 “blacks,” i.e., West Africans and Martinicans) and a few metropolitan French prisoners. Most prisoners worked outside the camp during the day, mostly on farms surrounding the town. A Muslim prisoner told the inspectors that the metropolitan French man of confidence (homme de confiance) gave preference to his countrymen in the distribution of food parcels; the inspectors suggested that a colonial soldier be appointed as the man of confidence, and the Germans concurred. Whether this actually happened is unclear.

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Frontstalag 132 at Laval. Camp entrance, May, 1941.

COURTESY OF ICRC.

The Scapini Mission learned that conditions were rapidly improving in Frontstalag 132 during its second visit to the camps and work commandos on June 19–21, 1941. The camp in Laval only housed 1,932 prisoners at this time (mostly North Africans but also including 46 metropolitan French-men), and it had showers and better sleeping quarters. The same was true for Mulsanne, which housed 2,420 North Africans and a few metropolitan Frenchmen and Indochinese (some of whom were actually civilian workers who had erroneously been detained as prisoners of war [POWs] and were released not much later). The Frontstalag had work commandos up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) north and east of Laval in Mayenne, Vautorte, Ambrières, La Baroche, Evron, Averton (Château Lorgerie), Bais, St. Pierre-sur-Orthe, Bernay, Savigné-l’Evesque, Ballon, and Beaumont. The prisoners in these commandos were predominantly North Africans. They worked in agriculture, forestry, and public works (maintenance of roads and bridges). Conditions were generally good, but many prisoners needed new shoes. In some commandos [End Page 149] the prisoners complained that the French employers had not yet paid them for their labor. The health situation in the camps of Laval and Mulsanne was not very good. The ICRC inspection noted in May 1941 that 10 percent of the prisoners in Laval showed signs of tuberculosis. The inspector of the Scapini Mission found 15–18 percent of the prisoners there to be affected by tuberculosis in June, in particular those prisoners who had spent the fall of 1940 in Germany.³

The camp in Mulsanne received several visits from Oberstleutnant Johannes Gutschmidt, who was in charge of several Frontstalags at the time. In his diary, Gutschmidt mentions that, in December 1940, the camp held some French civilians who had been mistaken for soldiers; he ordered their immediate dismissal. On Christmas 1940, Gutschmidt organized a celebration with the Catholic priest and some officers from the camp. In regular intervals, four women from the French Red Cross section in Paris drove two trucks to Mulsanne loaded with supplies for the prisoners. Gutschmidt, faced with a shortage of guards, ordered a better fence installed around the camp and launched several construction projects, but some prisoners took advantage of the construction and escaped. During one of his frequent visits, Gutschmidt talked to the Algerian imam of the camp, who organized frequent Muslim services in a mosque installed on the campgrounds. Gutschmidt ordered that a small tower be built so that the muezzin could call the prisoners to prayer.⁴

After Gutschmidt left, several reports indicate tensions between the French noncommissioned officers (NCOs) and the colonial prisoners as well as abuses by guards who were becoming nervous because of frequent escapes. A violent incident occurred in a commando in Bernay (Sarthe): during a dispute with the other prisoners, the French NCO Jardinie, who was the man of confidence of the local commando, attacked the African soldier Faki-Boukakeur with a chair, hitting him so hard that Faki-Boukakeur was sent to the hospital and lost an eye.⁵

Another incident occurred in a commando of five North Africans near Laval on September 3, 1941. After a prisoner escaped, the German guard assembled the other four prisoners. Farmers heard five shots and then saw the guard ride away on his bicycle. Later on, they found the corpses of three prisoners. The Scapini Mission requested an investigation, and Ambassador Scapini made it clear that he took a personal interest in this matter. The German embassy, however, delayed an investigation on procedural grounds, pointing out that the Scapini Mission had sent some letters to the wrong addresses. It appears that the incident was never investigated due to this minor technicality. The guard probably claimed that he shot the prisoners during another escape attempt.⁶

In September 1941, a German guard shot and killed three North African prisoners on a farm in retaliation for a successful escape of another prisoner even though the murdered prisoners had not tried to escape. This incident triggered a sustained inquiry by the Scapini Mission. The Germans were evasive, however, even though Ambassador Scapini himself was deeply concerned and took a personal interest in the case.⁷

In December 1941, another scandal erupted in Laval, this time involving two French NCOs who were in charge of 600 colonial prisoners. The prisoners complained that the two NCOs had taken money from them and treated them brutally. To the inspector from the Scapini Mission who investigated the case, the accused NCOs claimed that the prisoners had become unruly because of widespread gambling and that confiscating their money had been the only way to restore calm. The inspector found the NCOs untrustworthy but also argued that the accusations of the prisoners were exaggerated, as allegedly had to be expected from “indigenous” people.⁸ It is unclear how the conflict was resolved.

In the summer of 1941, the Germans made intensive propaganda efforts in Frontstalag 132 because of the strong presence of North Africans, who were the principal target of German pro-Islamic propaganda. Some German officers appeared and told the prisoners: “You were Frenchmen for fighting, for letting yourselves get killed, for becoming prisoners. You are no longer considered Frenchmen when it comes to liberation.” The German officers pretended that Germany would be happy to let the North African prisoners go but that the French government was objecting to their release.⁹

The last POWs left the camp of Mulsanne in the summer of 1941. The site became an internment camp for Gypsies and, in October 1942, for Jews on their way to the Drancy camp. The camp in Laval and the work commandos remained part of Frontstalag 132 until it was administratively dissolved and integrated into Frontstalag 133 at the end of 1941.