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

The Germans established Frontstalag 195 on August 22, 1940, probably in Saint-Omer in the northernmost region of France (map 2). Given the pressure of the Scapini Mission and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on the German army to send colonial prisoners to regions with a mild climate, the Germans transferred Frontstalag 195 to the Landes Département in the southwest of France, near the Atlantic coast, probably in December 1940. The camp headquarters was located in the village of Onesse-et-Laharie (1), near the road from Bordeaux to Bayonne, and work commandos performed predominantly forestry work in the surrounding region.¹ The camp received the field post number (Feldpostnummer) 12 656 between April 28 and September 14, 1940. The number was struck between July 15, 1942, and January 24, 1943.

As the history of Frontstalag 195 shows, the transfer of colonial prisoners to the three major camps located in southwestern France (Frontstalags 195, 221, and 222), although well intended, was not beneficial for the prisoners. The winters in this area, though milder than in northern France, were still harsh for people from tropical climates, as the Scapini Mission pointed out from the start. In addition, the transfer of colonial prisoners to the southwest created overcrowding and overburdened the local food supply. The German occupation zone in this region was narrow, and the demarcation line interrupted regional trade and supply lines. Throughout 1941, the French Red Cross section of Périgueux, in the unoccupied zone, gradually built up an efficient supply system for the three major camps in the southwest that complemented and at times replaced the meager German rations. This source of supply dried up, however, when the German secret service found out that the drivers had smuggled letters and persons across the demarcation line and engaged in resistance activities. The Red Cross trucks for a while lost permission to pass the demarcation line. As a consequence, the food supply of the prisoners in the three southwestern camps was often unsatisfactory from 1942 to 1944.

Generally, conditions in Frontstalag 195 were difficult. The guards, who with a few notable exceptions seemed to be generally correct and well intended (many of them received special praise from inspectors and prisoners), were not primarily responsible for the difficulties but rather the labor conditions. Forestry commandos required the hardest physical labor imposed on any Frontstalag prisoners. Prisoners in forestry commandos had less contact with French civilians, poorer medical care, and worse accommodations than prisoners in agriculture or public works. Food shortages had particularly harsh consequences on prisoners performing hard work, and the lack of decent clothing, including shoes and mittens, was particularly painful in forestry, where the work was most intense in the winter. The labor-intensive harvesting, cutting, and transporting of lumber required a large workforce. Work commandos in this part of France were, therefore, unusually large: an ICRC inspection of October 1942 mentioned an average size of 300 prisoners per commando, and one commando at one time had 574 prisoners. The conditions in the commandos of Frontstalag 195 created a very different atmosphere than the small work commandos of less than 20 prisoners assigned to individual farms that were common in other Frontstalags.

No information is available about the first phase of Frontstalag 195 in Saint-Omer. This region was incorporated into the German military district of Belgium, and the prisoners from Saint-Omer likely went to Germany in the fall of 1940. The first inspection of Frontstalag 195 occurred in April 1941, after the move to Onesse-et-Laharie. Ambassador Georges Scapini himself visited the camp in the company of inspector Jean Desbons and two German officers, including Major von Rosenberg, the Armed Forces High Command (OKW) representative in Paris. The main camp was located in the Laharie section of the village and held 560 colonial prisoners, including 42 North African officers. The inspectors criticized that the barracks were built on sandy soil and provided insufficient shelter from the wind, which tended to blow sand across the plains. The food supply was bad, the clothing of the prisoners was in poor shape, and washing facilities did not exist. The guards were fairly strict. In sum, the inspectors found Laharie “a very bad camp.” They also noted in a later summary of camp visits that many prisoners were in poor health, possibly as a result of bad hygiene caused by the lack of washing facilities. No visit of work commandos took place in April 1941.²

Conditions in the main camp improved quickly, however. In July, shower facilities were made available, and the camp was less crowded because more prisoners were assigned to commandos, but the inspector, Dr. Bonnaud, still criticized that some commandos did not offer satisfactory sanitary conditions. Bonnaud reiterated that the 30 wooden barracks in Laharie did not protect the prisoners from the clouds of dust and sand created by the wind. The food supply had improved, largely thanks to the Red Cross of Périgueux. Religious services for Muslims were well set up, even in the remote work commandos, but the prisoners often requested copies of the [End Page 183] Quran, and some Christian prisoners complained about not having Catholic services in their camp or commando.

Major work commandos visited by Bonnaud were located in Escource, Sainte-Eulalie, Mimizan, Lue, Moncenx, Labouheyre, Solferino, Daugnague, and Ychoux. All of them performed forestry work. The commando in Mimizan had a dysfunctional sewer system and was too exposed to the wind. In Sainte-Eulalie, the 478 prisoners, mostly West Africans, were plagued by vermin. The commando of Daugnague (with 212 Moroccans and 2 Algerians) was in particularly bad shape: it had too little food, drinking water, and medicine. A German foreign ministry official, after reviewing the inspection reports, dismissed the problems as trivial, however.³

Conditions in the Frontstalag remained rather different from one commando to the other. In the fall of 1941, inspectors still noted the lack of food and warm winter clothing and commented on strict discipline in some commandos. In the main camp in Laharie, some prisoners had dug a tunnel under the fence surrounding the camp, but a prisoner had betrayed the project to the Germans. As a punishment, the Germans canceled Ramadan festivities and withheld letters and packages for four days.⁴ A woman working for the French Red Cross noted that several commandos had incompetent or corrupt men of confidence, and she confirmed that the German guards were very strict in some places (often in response to escapes), but, in other commandos, she specifically praised the German commanders and guards for their caring and friendliness (as in Arengosse, Mont-de-Marsan, Labouheyre, and Mimizan). The food supply was insufficient in several commandos (now reflecting the consequences of the sanctions against the Red Cross of Périgueux), and the prisoners often did not have enough blankets for the cold nights.⁵ In the commando of Solferino, an outraged North African prisoner denounced the Algerian man of confidence, whom he accused of corruption, exploitation of prisoners, and an unpatriotic attitude. Apparently, this man had pointed at the other prisoners and said to the guards (in German), “They are all swine.”⁶

The prisoner population of Frontstalag 195 declined from the summer of 1941 to the spring of 1942. In July 1941, Frontstalag 195 was the second largest in France (after Frontstalag 135, with 5,518 prisoners), with a total of 5,420 prisoners (3,522 North Africans, 1,090 West Africans, 693 Madagascans, and 115 Martinicans), reflecting both the compliance of the Germans with French and ICRC requests for the transfer of colonial prisoners to a milder climate and the strong interest of the German military command in France in lumber production for construction projects and fuel. For lack of tools, carriage animals, and truck fuel, however, the lumber harvest lagged far behind expectations. As a consequence, occupancy of Frontstalag 195 declined due to reassignments of prisoners from this overcrowded camp to neighboring Frontstalags (221 and 222) and in part due to the dismissal of the 10,000 North Africans from the Frontstalags in December 1941. In April 1942, Frontstalag 195 held only 2,865 prisoners (943 Algerians, 709 West Africans, 414 Moroccans, 411 Tunisians, 288 Madagascans, 71 Indochinese, and 29 Martinicans)—even though it had just absorbed Frontstalag 184 in Angoulême. By contrast, Frontstalag 221 still had approximately the same number of prisoners, while Frontstalag 222 had nearly doubled in size.⁷

The reduced occupancy of the Frontstalag did not resolve its most prominent problems. The food supply, in particular, remained poor. In the work commando of Lue, for example, the 201 prisoners were on their feet for nine hours daily while receiving nothing but a piece of bread and a cup of tea. In Ychoux (330 prisoners), the sanitary conditions were precarious, and an abusive guard named Sudau had injured two prisoners who had claimed to be too sick for work. The German officer accompanying the camp inspector interrogated Sudau, who admitted everything, and started disciplinary procedures against him, but the outcome is unknown. In the commando of Sore (574 prisoners), the German guards had withheld the bulk of some rice deliveries sent to the Indochinese prisoners for the Tet holiday. After being confronted by the German officer and the French inspector, the guards handed the remaining rice to the prisoners. Reflecting the widespread veneration of Marshal Pétain among the colonial prisoners, the Indochinese prisoners in this commando had handcrafted an elaborate carpet that they had sent to Pétain.⁸

Information on the camp is sparse for the period after 1941. A renewed commitment of the German military command to intensifying the lumber harvest prompted new transfers of prisoners to Frontstalag 195, whose occupancy increased in the fall of 1942. An ICRC inspection in October 1942 found Frontstalag 195 to be in very good shape. The food supply had become “very good” thanks to deliveries from local French Red Cross sections (albeit the inspectors noticed that the section of Périgueux was no longer involved in the supply system). As elsewhere, the prisoners needed new shoes, but, overall, the ICRC rated the conditions as “good” and suggested that they would be “very good” after a few minor improvements. According to the ICRC report, the number of prisoners in the Frontstalag had increased to 5,800 (including commandos). The camp in Laharie alone housed 2,181 prisoners. Religious services were considered good for Muslims but less good for Catholics.⁹

Hardly any information exists for the last period of the Frontstalag, except for some correspondence regarding a corrupt man of confidence named Allah Akobabd in the commando of Solferino. This man, with a few accomplices among the prisoners, allegedly tempted others to engage in gambling and made much money in the process.¹⁰

The Germans disbanded the camp on August 12, 1943.