After the country’s surrender during the Battle of France in May–June 1940, 1,845,000 prisoners of war, including 13,000 Jews, were captured by the Nazi army. They were transported to Germany and interned in various camps for the duration of the war.
75 prisoner-of-war camps for prisoners from France were established in Germany. These were divided into Oflags (officers’ camps) and Stalags (camps for noncommissioned officers and enlisted men). Some prisoners worked on farms, others on construction sites or in factories. A few thousand of them managed to escape.
Among the French prisoners of war held in Germany from 1940 to 1945 were approximately 13,000 Jews (French citizens by birth or naturalization, and foreign volunteers). With a few exceptions, Jews were treated in accordance with the 1929 Geneva Convention, which requires respect for the dignity of prisoners. The status of these soldiers as prisoners of war also helped protect their families from the anti-Semitic measures imposed by the Occupation forces with the zealous complicity of the Vichy government. However, several hundred wives and children of foreign Jewish prisoners of war were interned in the transit camps at Drancy, Pithiviers, and Beaune-la-Rolande.
In May and July 1944, 168 women and 77 children of prisoners were sent directly from Drancy to the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany. The Nazis held Jews there who could be exchanged for Germans interned abroad. These women and children of Jewish prisoners of war who had immigrated from France were sent in evacuation convoys from Bergen-Belsen to Theresienstadt in April 1945. Along the way, they were liberated, partly by American troops and partly by Soviet troops. 154 women and 73 children of prisoners of war survived.
According to the list of convoys compiled upon arrival at the Bergen-Belsen camp, 245 women and children of foreign Jewish prisoners of war are listed.
The vast majority of Jewish prisoners of war did not find their families—who had been exterminated by the Nazis—upon liberation.
References:
– Yves Durand, 1994, Prisoners of War in the Stalags, Oflags, and Kommandos, 1939–1945, Hachette
– Doerry, Janine , 2010 , *History of the Bergen-Belsen Memorial*, dissertation defended at the University of Hanover.
