Pere Lachaise Cemetery covers an impressive 110 acres. In this vast expanse one will find many monuments and memorials dedicated to both heroes and casualties of various conflicts. One such unsettling shrine, which can be found on the exterior wall that surrounds the burial ground, depicts men and women crying out in agony. The images of the slaughtered are rather ethereal, appearing as ghostly figures emerging from the stonewall.
This commemoration goes by many names. The one that is most often cited is ‘The Victims of Revolutions,’ however, it is frequently misidentified as “The Wall of the Fédérés” or Communard’s Wall. In the later part of the 19th century, nearly 150 political objectors, made up of both men and women, where lined up against this wall in the burial ground and massacred. These martyred activists, referred to as Communards, were resisting the forces of the Franco-Prussian War. Their unpretentious monument can be located in the south-eastern corner of the cemetery.
French sculptor Paul Moreau-Vauthier (1871 – 1936), who happens to be laid to rest inside the cemetery, repurposed the original bullet-ridden stones from the massacre. His depiction of the travesty also heavily emulates the events, with a woman standing in front to protect those behind from the ensuing gunfire. On the lower left-hand side is a quote from the French author and novelist Victor Hugo (1802 – 1885); “What we ask of the future, what we want from it, is justice, not vengeance!’
