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

The Wehrmacht created Frontstalag 241 on July 22, 1940, and disbanded the camp on April 5, 1941. The unit received field post number (Feldpostnummer) 01 068 between April 28 and September 14, 1940. This number was struck between July 15, 1942, and January 24, 1943.

Frontstalag 241 held French prisoners of war. It was headquartered in Saint-Mihiel (map 2) and existed for only a short time before it was integrated into Frontstalag 194 in Châlonssur-Marne. The Frontstalag included several subcamps, one of them in the small town of Lérouville, 15 kilometers (over 9 miles) south of Saint-Mihiel. Little is known about this Frontstalag, except for an incident that led to a trial in early 1941. On August 31, 1940, a severe brawl occurred between North African prisoners and prisoners from West Africa and Madagascar in the camp of Lérouville. The German guards tried to break up the fight and fired a warning shot that severely wounded one prisoner. When their admonitions failed to stop the brawl, the guards ordered all prisoners to return to their barracks, but four North African prisoners refused to obey. In April 1941, these four prisoners stood trial in Angoulême (Frontstalag 184)—where three of them had been transferred—for refusing to obey orders. The judge could not establish without a doubt that the accused prisoners had participated in the brawl but convicted them for disobedience. Their pretrial confinement, however, exceeded the length of punishment, and the accused prisoners therefore did not have to go to jail.¹

Frontstalag 241 in Saint-Mihiel was one of the camps visited by the American delegates Jefferson Patterson and Dr. Vance Murray in mid-September 1940. At the time of their visit, the camp had only metropolitan French prisoners, as the colonial soldiers had been sent to camps farther south, where the climate was more suitable for them. Patterson and Dr. Murray found the camp in good shape but noted that “it is believed, however, that this condition has existed for not more than 6 weeks, and that the camp from May to the beginning of August was greatly overcrowded with a distinctly inadequate food ration.” They also heard reports of brutality during the early weeks, when the Frontstalag was guarded by hardened frontline troops without any experience in camp management. As elsewhere, however, the installation of more experienced German commanders and guard units had made a big difference: “This situation had been recognized by the higher German officers in the occupied zone so these had [sic], some weeks before, caused the camp to be completely reorganized through introduction of a staff of older officers with experience in camp management. The original personnel, both officers and men, had been sent elsewhere. The camp was then organized along the lines of those in Germany, and overcrowding had ceased through transfer of colored troops to camps in southern France, and of white troops to the Reich.”²

Because of its location near the borders with Luxembourg and Germany, Frontstalag 241 had primarily functioned as a transit camp for the masses of French prisoners en route to Germany in the summer and fall of 1940 and was dissolved once the transfer was largely completed. A work commando (Arbeitskommando) with 34 prisoners, mostly West Africans, continued to perform agricultural work in Saint-Mihiel under the authority of Frontstalag 194.³