Two large German military cemeteries in France that remember Jewish soldiers

World War I was a colossal slaughter, with battles that had brutal numbers of combat casualties.

Deutscher Soldatenfriedhof Cuacos de Yuste, the only German Military Cemetery in Spain
The German Military Cemetery of Recogne, where 6,807 fallen rest in Belgium

One such battle took place at Arras in northern France in 1917. There, the German Army faced Allied forces consisting of soldiers from France, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Newfoundland (then a British colony), New Zealand and South Africa. Arras was a Pyrrhic victory for the Allies, due to its low strategic impact and high number of casualties. In just over a month, more than 150,000 Allied soldiers and some 125,000 Germans died.

The fallen of the Battle of Arras were buried in a multitude of temporary cemeteries. Two cemeteries were built in Saint-Laurent-Blangy, France: a British one, the Bailleul Road East Cemetery (which holds over 1,000 fallen from the countries of the British Commonwealth of Nations), and a German one, the Kriegsgräberstätte Saint-Laurent-Blangy, about 40 metres away. of the British cemetery and where 31,339 soldiers are buried.

If that number of buried soldiers seems chilling to you, 5 kilometers away there is another German cemetery with fallen soldiers from Arras, the Deutsche Kriegsgräberstätte Neuville-St. Vaast, with 44,888 soldiers buried (to give you an idea, the huge and famous Normandy American Cemetery has 9,388 soldiers buried).

Today, the Youtube channel The History Underground (which I recommend you subscribe to if you are interested in military history) has published an interesting video visiting the British cemetery and the two German cemeteries I mentioned:

You can see some screenshots from the video below. Here we see the Bailleul Road East British Military Cemetery, with the Cross of Sacrifice, a stone cross and bronze sword monument, which has been included in all Commonwealth military cemeteries with at least 40 graves since 1920. Of the more than 1,000 soldiers buried here, only 542 could be identified. The rest are marked by anonymous headstones. The cemetery was opened in 1917 and covers an area of ​​4,486 square metres.

The German Military Cemetery of Saint-Laurent-Blangy is very close by, to the left of the image just seen, just across the road. This cemetery was created in 1921. In 1956 many Germans buried in the Military Cemetery of Comines were moved to Saint-Laurent-Blangy. Until 1972 the cemetery had wooden tombstones, later replaced by metal crosses. In this cemetery there are 7,069 fallen in individual graves and 24,870 in a large common grave. Among the buried soldiers there are 11,587 who could not be identified. One thing that will catch the attention of many is that in this cemetery there are Jewish tombstones, made of stone and with Stars of David and texts in Hebrew, like this one we see here:

Below these lines we see another Jewish grave in the German Military Cemetery in Neuville-St. Vaast. We remember that after their expulsion from other European countries during the late Middle Ages, many Jews left for the Kingdom of Poland and the territories that are now part of Germany. During the World War I, many Jews fought for their homeland in the ranks of the German Army. I am glad to see that they are remembered in this way. This cemetery in Neuville-St. Vaast was inaugurated in 1919 by the French authorities. Until 1970 it had wooden crosses, later replaced by metal crosses. In this cemetery there are 8,040 fallen in a common grave. The rest are in individual graves. In this place there are 615 fallen who could not be identified.

As a curiosity, the Neuville-St. Vaast German Military Cemetery is on the former front line, which is why you can see this old World War I bunker, half-buried, in the middle of the rows of crosses.