Thiaroye 1944. The Final Shadows of a Colonial Massacre

For a long time, Biram Senghor visited the Thiaroye military cemetery, bowing randomly in front of one grave or another. How could he have known which one belonged to his father, Mbap Senghor, who fell on December 1, 1944, under the bullets of the army to which he belonged ? Here, in this burial ground on the outskirts of Dakar, sandwiched between the national highway and a fertilizer factory, all the graves are anonymous. And perhaps empty. For there is no guarantee that the victims of the Thiaroye massacre are buried here. Their bodies were likely thrown into a mass grave, but where ? Eighty years after the massacre, we still don’t know. Nor do we know the exact number of victims, nor the identity of most of them. Why so many unanswered questions ?

In March 1945, in the conclusion of his report¹ on “the events of Thiaroye,” colonial inspector Louis Mérat made the following recommendation: “It is best that oblivion (which appropriate measures will facilitate) quickly diminish the memory of these hours of madness.” His goal was only partially achieved: eight decades later, the Thiaroye affair is more talked about than ever, especially since the new Senegalese authorities have decided to reclaim its memory. But his wish was only half granted: despite the efforts of historians, many uncertainties and unknowns still surround the circumstances of the massacre.

However, Thiaroye is not an archival desert: in the various archives, there are “at least 1,400 sheets” that recount the event and its consequences, according to historian Martin Mourre in his book Thiaroye 1944 : histoire et mémoire d’un massacre colonial (Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2017). But these archives have glaring gaps and contradictions. Sometimes, they simply lie.

Four years in captivity

In 1939, the Second World War broke out. In all corners of the French colonial empire, there was a general mobilization. Like Mbap Senghor, who left his wife and son Biram in Senegal, tens of thousands of “indigenous” soldiers had to leave their homes to fight in mainland France. In the spring of 1940, it was a rout: the French army was defeated by Hitler’s Germany.

Many so-called “Senegalese” skirmisher - in reality, they came from all over French West Africa (Afrique-Occidentale française, AOF) - were captured. They were interned in Frontstalags, prisoner camps located in France: the Nazis were so racist that they did not want black men to set foot on the soil of the Reich. They feared “a kind of ’racial contagion’: that these men would bring diseases and have relations with German women,” explains Martin Mourre to Afrique XXI. Some skirmishers managed to escape and, sometimes, join the French Resistance. Others remained in captivity for four years.

Starting in June 1944, France was gradually liberated. African prisoners of war were also released. The military staff decided to repatriate and demobilize them. But before returning them to civilian life, they had to be paid various sums of money, including back pay and a demobilization bonus. A quarter of the back pay was to be paid in mainland France, and the rest upon their arrival in Africa.

Cautious, some 300 skirmishers refused to leave until they had received their due. On November 5, 1944, 1,600 to 1,700 men, including Mbap Senghor, left the port of Morlaix (in Brittany, Finistère) aboard the Circassia, a British ship. Upon arriving in Dakar, after three stops (including one in Casablanca), they were taken to the military camp of Thiaroye, located about fifteen kilometers from the capital of AOF. It was from there that tensions rose and accounts began to diverge.

“Restore authority and prestige”

As November 1944 drew to a close, days passed but the pay still hadn’t arrived. Hundreds of skirmishers were supposed to board trains to return to their homes. They refused: “They were aware that once they were far from Dakar, separated, each in their village, they would never succeed in getting paid what they were owed,” explains Samba Diop, author of the first Senegalese academic study on the Thiaroye massacre in 1993, a master’s thesis² defended at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar.

To resolve the issue, General Marcel Dagnan, commander of the Senegal-Mauritania division, visited the camp on November 28^th. The meeting did not go well. In a report written after the massacre, the high-ranking officer claimed, against all evidence, that the former prisoners had already received all their due. He then explained that the dialogue had been tense. Finally, he recounted that the skirmishers had blocked his car with wedges and barbed wire before letting him go after he promised to examine their claims³. The officer felt that his authority had been undermined. He could not tolerate the way the soldiers had dared to assert their rights. In his report, he concluded: “I was firmly convinced that the entire detachment was in a state of rebellion and that it was necessary to restore discipline and obedience by means other than speech and persuasion.”

The repressive machinery was set in motion. On November 30, an encrypted telegram announced to the metropolis that the military command of Dakar was going to launch a military operation against skirmishers with an “arrogant attitude” and “unacceptable demands.” The aim was to “restore authority and prestige.”⁴

It will be a massacre with machine guns. The first massacre attributable to Free France after the fall of the Vichy regime (1940-1944). Several others will occur in the following years, in Algeria (Sétif, Guelma and Kherrata, 1945), Indochina (Haiphong, 1946), Madagascar (1947) and Ivory Coast (Dimbokro, 1950).

A “premeditated” massacre

Concerning the exact events of December 1^st, historians have two contradictory sets of sources. First, there are the reports of the officers involved in the massacre, who attempt to justify their actions. They accuse the skirmishers of being armed mutineers and of violence. In these accounts, “the insurgents are depicted as insulting. They seize a half-track, injure a junior officer after stealing his pistol; moreover, shots were heard coming from the barracks. Fearing being overwhelmed, Lieutenant-Colonel Le Berre, who commanded the intervention and police detachment, gave the order to fire automatic weapons at 9:30 am after a warning,” summarizes historian Armelle Mabon in her recent book, Le Massacre de Thiaroye, 1er décembre 1944. Histoire d’un mensonge d’État (Le Passager clandestin, November 2024).

Historians also have access to interrogation reports of the alleged “ringleaders” of the “mutiny”. 48 were arrested after the massacre, and 34 were convicted in March 1945 of “armed rebellion” and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. In his statement, Corporal Antoine Abibou categorically denies having carried a bayonet. Overall, the accused “say they were gathered on a square in the morning and shot at,” summarizes Martin Mourre, who finds this account “much more coherent, more homogeneous” than the officers’ version, which he considers “contradictory, with things that do not match from one report to another.”

A significant detail seems to corroborate the innocence of the accused: on the security forces’ side, there is only one gunshot wound. Furthermore, according to a ballistics expert, the bullet in question ricocheted before hitting its victim. According to Martin Mourre, the projectile “undoubtedly came” from the security forces themselves. This tends to confirm that “the skirmishers were not armed, otherwise they would have defended themselves. They would also have caused injuries, or even deaths” among the security forces.

In her book, Armelle Mabon also highlights inconsistencies in the officers’ accounts. Various clues lead her to conclude that Thiaroye was not the bloody repression of an armed mutiny, but “a premeditated massacre.” Martin Mourre tends to agree with this hypothesis: “It didn’t happen [decided] that morning like that as a result of some kind of uncontrolled chain of events, which was one of the army’s lines of defense: to say that events had overtaken them somewhat, and then that they had been led to open fire. No. Rather, we should imagine that these men were gathered together and that fire was deliberately opened on them.”

More than 300 dead ?

How many people died ? That’s the big question. For seven decades, the officially recognized number was 35 deaths. In his speech on November 30, 2014, at the Thiaroye military cemetery, French President François Hollande acknowledged “probably more than 70.” Where do these figures come from ? From two versions of the same document that we have already mentioned: the report of December 5, 1944, by General Marcel Dagnan. In the copy found in the National Overseas Archives in Aix-en-Provence, it mentions 24 deaths and “46 wounded transported to the Dakar hospital, 11 of whom subsequently died.” A total of 35 deaths. In the version held by the Historical Defense Service in Vincennes (suburb of Paris), the general mentions 24 deaths as well, but “46 wounded transported to the Dakar hospital and who died subsequently.” A total of 70 deaths.

For Martin Mourre, this variation in numbers is the sign of a kind of “lie”: a clue that there is, at the very least, “something fishy” and that the real toll is possibly much higher. In her book, Armelle Mabon recalls that in 1995, the Senegalese historian Mbaye Gueye had arrived at a figure of 156 missing persons. The filmmaker Ousmane Sembène, director of the famous film Camp de Thiaroye (1988) and himself a former Senegalese skirmisher, had spoken of 380 victims, without specifying where he got this figure from. Through various calculations and deductions, both Armelle Mabon and Martin Mourre propose a range of 300 to 400 deaths.

Their reasoning is as follows: while between 1,600 and 1,700 skirmishers embarked from Morlaix on the Circassia for Dakar, several archives indicate that once they arrived at Thiaroye, there were only about 1,300 returnees. Therefore, 300 to 400 men are missing. Where did they go ? According to the official version, they interrupted their journey in Morocco. “An intelligence note states that 400 of the repatriated skirmishers refused to re-embark on the Circassia after the stopover in Casablanca,” explains Armelle Mabon to Afrique XXI. Problem: in the archives of the trial of the “ringleaders” of the “rebellion”, the historian and her colleague have unearthed a document that contradicts this thesis. It is the report of a squadron leader “present on the ship and who says that everything went well during the stopover in Casablanca.” If 400 men had disappeared, it is difficult to imagine that this report would not have mentioned it... Armelle Mabon adds that in the trial archives, she also found a report in which a non-commissioned officer “indigenous” states that “there was a small problem with blankets [to sleep, editor’s note] in Casablanca but otherwise everything went very well.”

According to the historian, the approximately 400 skirmishers who supposedly remained on the quay in Casablanca could therefore correspond to the number of victims. In Martin Mourre’s view, this estimate “is the most credible working hypothesis.”

Missing archives

To be sure, other documents would need to be found. According to Armelle Mabon, the army must have drawn up a nominal list of the skirmishers who disembarked in Dakar a few days before the massacre. Perhaps there was also a list of victims ? Problem: they are nowhere to be found. Did they really exist ? Were they destroyed ? Are they hidden or simply lost in some cardboard box among thousands of other archives ? For now, it remains a mystery.

“I’m not sure that a nominal list of the killed was drawn up at the time,” concedes Martin Mourre. “We can imagine that in the haste of the events, on December 1^st, 1944, they sought to cover their tracks rather than create new ones.” As for the rest, the historian thinks, like her colleague, that other papers must have existed, starting with the list of repatriated skirmishers. “There was a daily call to check for deserters, so it’s clear that these documents were established,“emphasizes Armelle Mabon.”Moreover, in the trial archives, there is a note that asks: ’Can you verify on the list of repatriates that the accused were indeed on the ship ?’”

Among the missing military archives that she suspects exist, the historian also cites written orders relating to the preparation of the massacre, the mapping of mass graves, but also the “calculations of salaries and demobilization bonuses”. To obtain them, Armelle Mabon has launched several procedures before the Commission on Access to Administrative Documents (Cada)⁵. Most often, the Ministry of the Armed Forces has countered that the archives she requested did not exist or no longer existed. The researcher is convinced of the opposite.

According to Armelle Mabon, some of the evidence concerning Thiaroye could have the status of “intermediate archives”, a category of documents that are no longer in current use but have not yet joined the collections accessible to historians. If this is the case, the researcher is asking the administration to make them available immediately.

“A lot of gaps”

What is certain is that France is clearly not doing everything it can to bring the truth to light. This is evident in the case of Lieutenant-Colonel Marcel Le Berre. On December 1^st, 1944, in Thiaroye, he ordered the opening of fire. Sometime later, he was sanctioned by the army. But in his military file, the reason for the sanction has been redacted, in application of an amnesty law of 1947. Despite repeated requests from Armelle Mabon, the Ministry of the Armed Forces still refuses to let her use an innovative technical process that would allow her to read through the India ink used to black out the document. A clear obstruction of historical research⁶.

The Senegalese state is also searching for the missing archives. According to the French daily Le Monde, “in mid-October, following a telephone exchange between Presidents [Bassirou Diomaye] Faye and [Emmanuel] Macron, Senegal made a request for the return of archives with a specific list of documents.”⁷ This approach is part of the research of the “Commemoration Committee” of the Thiaroye massacre set up by Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko in August 2024. Chaired by Senegalese historian Mamadou Diouf, this memorial body is tasked, among other things, with writing a new synthesis of the events by going “further in revealing the truth.”

The problem is, according to Le Monde, “the former colonial power claims to have already handed over all the documents it possesses”. It is true that in 2014, François Hollande gave the then Senegalese president, Macky Sall, a digital support supposed to contain a copy of “all the archives.” But according to Mamadou Koné, a Senegalese historian who has been able to consult it, this fund has “many gaps.”

Towards archaeological digs

Since the archives do not yet allow us to establish with certainty the extent of the massacre, the possibility remains to search for the bodies and count them. Although the idea has been raised several times, the Senegalese state has so far never undertaken any archaeological excavations, neither in the cemetery nor on the perimeter of the former military camp.

Just a few days before the 80^th anniversary of the massacre, scheduled for Sunday, December 1^st, 2024, the new authorities have not yet made an official announcement on the matter. But they seem determined: the excavations, “it’s a done deal,” assures Dialo Diop, memory advisor to President Bassirou Diomaye Faye. “It’s obvious” and “a necessity,” he adds. All that remains is to find the location of the mass graves. This quest could take time: since 1944, the former military camp and the surrounding bush have been largely urbanized. A hospital, several schools, and even a highway have been built there.

If the remains of the victims are eventually located and identification work is launched, it may also be complex. As Senegalese military personnel explained to Dialo Diop, “when you attack a gathering with a machine gun, you can’t find whole bodies to bury. You cut them to pieces, they are shredded”.

In recent years, Biram Senghor has stopped visiting the anonymous graves in the Thiaroye military cemetery. At 86 years old, his eyesight is no longer good enough. The old man remains convinced that his father, Mbap, is buried there, “but in a mass grave”. Will he ever have his own grave with his name and his properly identified remains ? Perhaps, but it hasn’t happened yet.