Neuville-St.-Vaast

Neuville-St.-Vaast is a commune in the Département Pas-de-Calais in the north of France. The military cemetery is located one and a half kilometers south of the town center. The entrance area has a hall open to the cemetery. A relief on a stone block depicts the course of the front from 1914 to 1918. The relief also names 17 cemeteries of other nations in the immediate vicinity, where together more than 200,000 dead are buried, including English, French, Canadians, Czechs and Poles.

A wooden cross donated by the municipality bears the inscription "Paix aux Hommes de Bonne Volonté" (Peace to men of good will). Metal crosses at the graves bear the names and dates of those who rest here. Of the 36,848 fallen in individual graves, 588 are unknown. 8.040 of the fallen rest in communal graves. 32 slate crosses mark this 140 meter long burial mound. The 842 names of the known fallen buried here are inscribed on metal plaques. The 131 graves of the fallen of the Jewish faith were given a natural stone grave stele instead of a cross.

44.888 German war dead of the First World War rest in Neuville-St.-Vaast. The site is the largest German military cemetery of the First World War in France. The German dead from more than 110 municipalities in the Département Pas-de-Calais, who had previously been provisionally buried in field graves or small war cemeteries, were reburied here. They died in the heavy fighting around Artois and the Loretto Heights from August 1914 to the end of 1915, around the Vimy Heights at Easter 1917 and in the fall of 1918, as well as in the trench warfare that continued between the major battles.

The cemetery was established by the French military authorities between 1919 and 1923 as a collective cemetery for German war dead from the area north and east of the city of Arras. in 1928, the Volksbund began work to improve the condition of the cemetery. in 1935, the Wehrmacht took over the sponsorship and soldiers donated several million Reichsmarks. Following the conclusion of the Franco-German War Graves Agreement of July 19, 1966, the Volksbund was able to undertake the final design of the German military cemeteries of the First World War in France. The Neuville-St.-Vaast cemetery was inaugurated on November 13, 1983.

Dead bodies are still being recovered in this region today, for example during construction work. In September 2023, UNESCO declared 139 First World War cemeteries as World Heritage Sites. 24 German cemeteries are in the care of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. - Neuville-St.-Vaast is one of them.