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Red Graves of Paris

The French like to honour their dead leaders in the grand manner. The tomb of Napoleon is housed in the magnificent Domes des Invalides in the centre of Paris, and the remains of France's most distinguished citizens, including the assassinated Socialist leader Jean Jaurès, are deposited in the Pantheon. Many of those who do not qualify for the Pantheon are nevertheless found a place in Paris's Cimetière de l'Est better known as Père Lachaise, taking its name from the confessor of Louis XIV who once had a house on this site.

This cemetery, located on a hill in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, covers over a hundred acres and is packed with the graves of eminent people. The first interments were those of La Fontaine and Molière in 1804, and several of Napoleon's marshals are buried here. Oscar Wilde's body was transferred here in 1909, from an obscure grave in Bagneux where he had been buried nine years before, and deposited in a striking tomb designed by Jacob Epstein. Edith Piaf's tiny body is buried quite near, marked by a simple headstone. In more recent times Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the cult pop group The Doors, was buried here in 1971 and his grave is a place of pilgrimage for many of his fans.

In the south eastern corner of the cemetery is the Mur des Fédérés, the wall against which 147 Communards were shot on 28 May 1871. Fierce fighting took place amongst the graves of Père Lachaise during the last stand of the Paris Commune. After the battle the surviving Communards were lined up against the wall and shot. They were buried where they fell in a mass grave. The original wall, bullet holes and all, survived until the 1960s when it was replaced by the present memorial in the form of a wall bearing the words:

On plots of land adjacent to the wall are grouped a number of memorials to: Jews and others who perished in the death camps; political prisoners who died in Nazi prisons and concentration camps; workers who died on wartime forced labour projects; and members of the Resistance who gave their lives in the liberation of France. Some of the memorials follow traditional patterns but others are more modern and abstract. For example, the memorial to the women who died at Ravensbruck concentration camp is a giant pair of clasped hands.

On land directly opposite to the wall are the graves of three men whose lives encompass a very large slice of the history of French communism. Their gravestones contain the following inscriptions:

It is inconceivable that the graves of Harry Pollitt, Palme Dutt or John Gollan would be accorded a similar position of honour in a major British cemetery. But then the Communist Party of Great Britain never acquired the power and influence enjoyed by the Parti Communiste Français. The PCF was a force to be reckoned with in early post-war politics. In the general election of November 1946, the first to be held under the new constitution of the Fourth Republic, the PCF won 169 seats (with 28.6 per cent of the poll), the Socialist Party 101 seats (17.9 per cent) and the Christian Democratic MRP won 158 seats (26.4 per cent). Maurice Thorez became deputy-premier in a coalition government under a Socialist premier, Paul Ramadier, with four Communist colleagues serving alongside him in the cabinet. The CPGB for all its efforts never managed to win electoral support on this scale and it was destined to operate on the margins of British political life, although it made some notable advances inside Britain's trade unions.

The south eastern corner of this famous cemetery is still a meeting place for left-wing groups, who assemble here on appropriate occasions to honour their dead. The numbers in attendance, however, are much smaller than they used to be. Gone are the days when PCF meetings drew thousands of people who came to listen to speeches by Thorez or Duclos. In any case, the space in front of the Wall of the Communards is now much more cramped than it was in the 1940s and 50s as new memorials have encroached upon previously open ground and there is no longer room for the old-style mass rallies.

Near the graves of the former leaders of the PCF there are several memorials to members of the International Brigade, including an impressive marble memorial to Dr Domanski Dubois, a medical officer with the Brigade who was killed by a sniper on the Aragon front and his body brought back to France for burial. Opposite is the grave of Largo Caballero, leader of the Spanish Socialists and Prime Minister of the Spanish Republic 1936-37. He fled to France after the fall of the Republic in 1939 and afterwards spent four years in a German concentration camp. He died in Paris in 1946.

It is surprising to find a memorial to Imre Nagy in the Père Lachaise cemetery. Nagy, a veteran communist, was Prime Minister of Hungary in 1956 and the head of the government that sought to introduce a multi-party system and take his country out of the Warsaw Pact. After the suppression of the Hungarian uprising by Soviet forces Nagy was arrested and held prisoner in Rumania. He was executed on 16 June 1958 and his corpse buried in an unmarked grave. In the 1980s the Hungarian refugee community in Paris sought permission to erect a memorial to Nagy in Père Lachaise. Their request was granted and the present memorial erected. It is a metal structure of abstract design and is decorated with ribbons in Hungary's national colours. In 1989 Nagy's body was recovered from a pauper's burial ground in Budapest and reburied with full state honours. Although Nagy now has a marked grave in his own country the memorial to him in Paris remains in place.

Inside the grounds of the cemetery is a crematorium nicknamed 'the Mosque' because of its oriental style. Crematoria are usually bleak, functional buildings but the crematorium at Père Lachaise is heavily ornate. The bodies of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre were both cremated here and their ashes taken to Montparnasse Cemetery on the Left Bank. Léon Blum's body was also cremated here and the old Socialist leader's ashes taken to the cemetery at Jouy-on-Josas.

Near the crematorium is a columbarium set in a garden of remembrance, where the ashes of the famous are deposited in concrete boxes built into the walls, each one marked with a name plaque. It is possible to arrange flowers in front of each plaque and many people do so. The plaques of Maria Callas and Isadora Duncan attract the most visitors, but the ashes of several prominent figures of the Left are deposited here and they are not neglected. There is the plaque of Pierre Mendès-France, one of the Fourth Republic's few Prime Ministers of any distinction, who served in the office 1954-55. He secured the withdrawal of French troops from Indo-China and set Tunisia on the road to independence. There is also the plaque of Richard Wright, the black American writer. Born in Natchez, Mississippi, Wright moved to Chicago in the 1930s where he joined the Communist Party. After leaving the Party in 1944 he settled in Paris, where he died in 1960. In addition to his works of autobiography and fiction he is remembered for his contribution to The God that Failed.

The ashes of Jean Moulin the Resistance leader were deposited at Père Lachaise for several years until he was elevated to the Pantheon, and André Malraux, left-wing writer, aviator, Resistance fighter and de Gaulle's Minister of Culture 1958-69 died in 1976 but was not admitted to the Pantheon until twenty years later, although there were some who doubted whether he rated such an honour. However if there is promotion in French burials there is also relegation, and Jean-Paul Marat the 'Friend of the People', who was assassinated in his bath by Charlotte Corday in 1793, was first buried in the Pantheon with full revolutionary honours but after three months, when the Terror began to wane, his corpse was quietly transferred to the nearby cemetery of St Étienne-du-Mont.

Both the Pantheon and Père Lachaise are well worth a visit. The Pantheon is located in Paris's Latin Quarter, and Père Lachaise can be reached by Métro on the Pont de Lavallois – Gallieni line. It is advisable to buy a map of Père Lachaise from the kiosk at the entrance to the cemetery for there are thousands of graves and the cemetery's layout can be very confusing.

Archie Potts

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Printable version of this issue

Communist History Network Newsletter, Issue 10, Spring 2001

Available on-line since April 2001