The last cemetery that we visited in
France was the Deutscher
Soldatenfriedhof Neuville Saint-
Vaast. It is a World War I cemetery located in Neuville-Saint-Vaast, a small village near Arras. The
German cemetery is the biggest one in France with almost 45000 burials. The cemetery was established by the French in 1919 as a concentration cemetery for German war casualties from the regions north and east of Arras. There is no central building, but a small chapel and gateway containing directories that list alphabetically the names of the soldiers interred here, identify the plot and section where they are buried and provide a map showing the location of all sections of the cemetery. Between 1975 and 1983 the
VDK(Verband Deutscher Kriegsfriedhöfe) completely reorganized the cemetery and replaced deteriorating wooden crosses by metal ones that include name, branch, date of death.
Each cross lists four individual names with four soldiers buried to a grave. Old small bunker type fortifications are also found in the cemetery. There are also 129 headstones for Jewish soldiers who fell fighting for
Imperial Germany.
We were divided into groups and every group focused on a different aspect. We had to look at the vegetation and the way the cemetery is integrated in the landscape. We found many different flowers, trees and tombstones. All the crosses are placed in rows. We needed this information for a workshop on
Thursday where we were to design a new memorial. The cemetery was a very beautiful place, with a sober and serene atmosphere.
Eva Mitteregger and Laura Destrooper