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

The Germans established Frontstalag 230 on July 20, 1940, and ordered its dissolution in September 1941 (it finished disbanding in November). The unit received field post number (Feldpostnummer) 20 054 between April 28 and September 24, 1940. The number was struck between February 15 and July 30, 1942.

Frontstalag 230 in Poitiers (map 1) is one of the best-known camps in France, in part because its most famous prisoner, Léopold Sédar Senghor, left a detailed account of his captivity there from October 1940 to the dissolution of the camp in 1941, and wrote the central section of his poem cycle Hosties noires (published in 1948) while there.¹ Senghor was camp secretary, a very desirable job that made him responsible for the card catalog of the prisoners; he was selected for this position after the camp commander saw him reading Plato.²

Little information exists about the camp’s first months. In October 1940, German army documents reveal a major problem with prisoner escapes because of its proximity to the demarcation line (this problem persisted and likely influenced the German decision to close the camp).³ Escape was dangerous early on, when German frontline units guarded the camp: an unofficial French report claimed that 50 prisoners were killed during escape attempts in the first months. Several recaptured prisoners went to the camp hospital with bullet wounds.⁴ Senghor later confirmed that escapes were very common, particularly among the North African prisoners: “They are the kings of escape, and one has to admire them here without reticence.” But escapes apparently became much less risky: Senghor mentions that groups of 20 prisoners would break out at night and flee. Only 1 in 20 prisoners was caught again.⁵

Senghor arrived in the camp approximately October 10, 1940, from a camp in Amiens (likely Frontstalag 171). He mentions that the first months were hard. The prisoners were housed in drafty, unheated hangars made of corrugated sheet metal. Senghor was allowed to move to barracks in December, but the hangars were used until January 1941 for some newly arrived North African prisoners from camps in the region of Paris (mainly Frontstalag 111 and 112).⁶ The barracks into which most of the prisoners moved were not much of an improvement because of poor construction and lack of insulation; they remained cold throughout the winter even though the prisoners had enough coal for heat. Senghor found that the slightest rain turned the pathways in the camp into ankle-deep mud and that the latrines were in bad shape.

The food in the camp was bad and scarce—mostly rutabagas and half-rotten potatoes—as confirmed by an unofficial French report.⁷ The prisoners had no washbasins or showers. Clothing was generally not an issue, although the prisoners had no gloves or socks, leading to many cases of frostbite. The camp commander, Hauptmann Hahn, was harsh and strict; the prisoners gave him the nickname “le Capitaine Achtung!” because of his habit of yelling commands in German. He once ordered a guard to shoot at a West African prisoner who had stolen potatoes; the prisoner was killed. Senghor assumed that Hahn was Prussian, reflecting a common prejudice of French POWs that equated harshness with Prussians and laxity with Austrians. Ironically, some inhabitants of Poitiers remembered that the first commander was Austrian and named Lahn.⁸

According to Senghor, the situation improved significantly when a new commander replaced Hahn in February 1941, “a very chic [which could mean elegant, nice, or friendly] officer who asks us to be worthy of the French army and of our French fatherland.” He calls the new commander “Lieutenant Bayle,” but this is almost certainly a misspelling. A camp inspection report of July 17, 1941, mentions a Leutnant Paillet and a Major List as camp commanders (one may have been the Frontstalag commander and the other the commander of the camp in Poitiers), with the name Paillet, probably pronounced by the Germans more like Peile or Beile, having some phonetic resemblance to “Bayle.” Under the new commander, the regime changed drastically. Paillet apparently announced after inspecting the camp that “this pigsty is not worthy of the French army” and ordered the construction of washbasins, toilets with running water, stone-paved roadways between the barracks, and exercise facilities. The prisoners themselves performed some of this work; for the more sophisticated jobs, Paillet hired companies from the town.

The food improved in quality and quantity. Senghor claims that “during the summer of 1941, we eat quite well for prisoners of war” and points out that those prisoners assigned to rural work commandos (approximately a third to half of the prisoners of Frontstalag 230) fared even better because they received lunch at the farmer’s family table. Senghor reserved special praise for the French women who had agreed to serve as war godmothers (marraines de guerre) for many of the colonial soldiers, sending them extra packages and letters. Not incidentally, one of the later poems of Hosties noires, “Femmes de France” (“Women of France”), is dedicated to Senghor’s own marraine and echoes his captivity report when he calls [End Page 198] the marraines, “the only support during days of overwhelming pressure, [d]ays of panic and despair” and concludes: “For them [the soldiers] you were mothers, for them you were sisters. Flames of France, flowers of France, bless you!”⁹

The camp inspections of the Scapini Mission from April 3 and July 17, 1941, confirm Senghor’s descriptions. The camp was situated in barracks that had once served as an artillery school and had housed an Algerian regiment before the war; around the camp, more barracks had recently been built (probably the ones Senghor mentioned and into which he was allowed to move from the hangar). The inspection report of April 3, by Dr. Bonnaud, points out that the ground was clay and flooded easily, confirming Senghor’s comment about the omnipresent mud. But Bonnaud noted that a construction company from the town had been contracted to build gutters and drainage pipes, and prisoners performed some of the manual labor related to the construction projects. The health situation was not very good in April: Since January 5, 48 sick prisoners had died, but the inspector noted that this mortality had to do with a group of prisoners who had arrived from a very bad camp (Frontstalag 231 in Airvault) already seriously ill. The camp hospital had 163 patients, of which 76 had been diagnosed with tuberculosis. The patients received good care.

The camp inspector noted that 30 “indigenous” prisoners were taking a German class and asked that French classes also be offered; one of the German students was Senghor, as a famous photo proves.¹⁰ The camp offered little distraction at this time. The exercise facilities mentioned by Senghor were not yet finished, and the camp lacked games and books. Several marabouts took care of the religious needs of the prisoners, who were predominantly Muslim. The German food rations were small, but the French Red Cross, coming from the unoccupied zone, brought additional food supplies, clothing, and cigarettes every 15 days (tobacco was considered an essential supply at the time even though the Geneva Convention did not require that the detaining power provide it to the prisoners).¹¹ Dr. Bonnaud found the main camp “mediocre” (in contrast to an outside work commando he visited and found “excellent”) but noted that significant improvements had been made or were in progress.¹²

The inspection report of July 17, by René Scapini, reflects the changes Senghor described: increased food rations, better shower and exercise facilities, and a much-improved health situation. The camp hospital now had only 10 patients, all with minor illnesses, and no prisoner had died since the preceding inspection. The camp had received a makeshift mosque, and it had opened a library. The prisoners were playing various sports but requested a soccer ball. They did not complain about the food and clothing but wished for more bread and new shoes. Their mood was fairly good, but the recent dismissal of almost all remaining white French prisoners in the Frontstalags had had a depressing effect on the remaining (colonial) prisoners. Some black prisoners feared being sent to Germany. Still, the report concluded: “Concerning life in the camp, the prisoners of war (POWs) are treated well, and they unanimously praise Major List and the German Leutnant Paillet for their sense of justice and for their understanding.”¹³

Outrage of colonial prisoners, especially people of color with French citizenship (like Senghor), was a widespread phenomenon in the Frontstalags after the dismissal of the “white” prisoners on July 3, 1941. Senghor, Tirolien, and Alcandre wrote a letter of complaint to Scapini on September 4, pointing out:

Called by France to help her, we, the colonial prisoners, have fulfilled our duty completely.

Having richly given our fatherland our blood and suffering, we had the right to hope that we would be liberated at the same time as our comrades from the metropole interned in France.

Some of us do indeed fulfill the conditions required for the liberation of the “metropolitans.”

We are long-standing French citizens, and some of us have lived in France for many years. They have their families and their interests here, and they work. Their work benefits the national collective.

At a time when France more than ever needs its people from overseas, we take the liberty, Mr. Ambassador, to draw your worthy attention to the painful situation experienced by certain colonial soldiers in comparison to their comrades from the metropole.¹⁴

What the letter writers did not know was that the discrimination inherent in the dismissal of July 3, 1941, was due to German, not French, decisions and that Scapini was constantly demanding the dismissal of all colonial prisoners held in France—to no avail.

Senghor’s account also dwells on some aspects that did not enter the inspection reports: the relations among the prisoners and German propaganda. On the first, he argues that the prisoners bonded well with other prisoners from the same colony, mentioning specifically the people from the French Antilles, Madagascar, Indochina, and West Africa. But he was very critical of certain prisoners: “Only the Arabs sow the seeds of discord (with the exception of the Moroccans). They seek to get the best jobs (in the administration, the kitchen, the best work commandos[,] etc.), and to that end they denigrate the other prisoners, especially the black intellectuals, whom they accuse of being Francophile and Germanophobic…. They even go so far as to make a secret war between each other: Tunisians against Algerians, and vice versa.”¹⁵

Senghor relates the tensions in the camp to German propaganda, which he claims was well organized by the “Gestapo” office at the camp command. (The Gestapo was not active in the camp, however, so Senghor may have meant either the German counterintelligence, the Abwehr, or the military secret police, the Geheime Feldpolizei). According to Senghor, German propaganda was directed exclusively at the Arabs; the Germans handed out Arabic newspapers, recruited spies among the prisoners, and supported Muslim religious [End Page 199] services. This propaganda had remarkable success: “The Arab ‘intellectuals,’ those who were a little educated, were the best agents of Germany. They would preach to their countrymen and denigrate France in front of the Germans.” When the Germans asked for volunteers to fight against the Soviet Union, only Arabs signed up, again mostly the more educated.¹⁶

Senghor mentions that the Arab NCOs tended to beat the rank and file, giving a bad example to the German guards who imitated them until Paillet stopped the abuses. The violence of the Arab NCOs exacerbated the tensions between Arabs and West Africans; occasionally, Arabs would accuse the West Africans of being rebellious and denounce them to the Germans. In one case, a German guard intervening in a fight between an Arab and a West African severely wounded the West African soldier with a pistol shot.¹⁷

Senghor describes the Tunisians and Algerians as the most active collaborators and spies, together with one white prisoner and a French physician, Dr. René Dardy (who is mentioned in the inspection report of April 3, 1941, as a medic who should be dismissed; according to Senghor’s report, he did obtain his release in May 1941). Dardy apparently told the German authorities to be suspicious of the intellectuals in the camp who all wanted to be liberated on the grounds of disease. Oddly, the unofficial French report about the camp also mentions this doctor and confirms that he treated many black prisoners as test subjects; the report also says that the prisoners believed the doctor to be Jewish and that he wanted to ingratiate himself with the Germans.¹⁸ Senghor also points out one particularly dangerous spy, the Tunisian soldier Mustapha Messaoudene, who denounced the Éboué brothers to the German camp authorities. The Éboué brothers were transferred to a different camp in late July 1941, probably as a consequence of the denunciation.¹⁹

Senghor reports that he stayed in Poitiers until early November 1941. He gave an intriguing reason for his transfer to another camp: in several interviews, he pointed out that he was sent to a reprisal camp in the Landes in November 1941 after having helped some Breton prisoners escape. Senghor most likely meant the camp of Saint-Médard-en-Jalles (Frontstalag 221), to which he was sent in early November.²⁰ This story, however, rests on insecure ground. According to all evidence, Senghor’s transfer from Poitiers to Saint-Médard simply had to do with the consolidation of the camps, begun in the fall of 1941 and completed in April 1942. The dissolution of Frontstalag 230 and the transfer of the prisoners to another camp was not a punishment. All prisoners from Poitiers were sent to Saint-Médard.²¹

In retrospect, Senghor may have viewed his transfer from Poitiers to Frontstalag 221 in Saint-Médard as a punishment because the latter was in much worse shape. As he says in his captivity report: “We used to complain about the camp in Poitiers. In Bordeaux, we longed for Poitiers like for a paradise lost.”²² The arrival in Saint-Médard of several thousand prisoners from Poitiers would certainly have exacerbated the conditions there; Frontstalag 230 had 3,062 prisoners in the fall of 1941, predominantly “Senegalese” (2,017) and North Africans (917), and prisoners from Frontstalag 135 also arrived there at this time.²³