Saigon European Cemetery

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Coordinates: 10 ° 47 '17.9 "  N , 106 ° 41' 38.3"  E

City map of Saigon in 1920, the Cimetière européen lies in the north of the city

The European Cemetery ( Cimetière européen ) was an important Christian cemetery in the Vietnamese metropolis of Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) that existed from 1859 to 1983. From the 1920s onwards, it was also referred to as the Massiges cemetery after the adjacent street , and from 1955 as the Mạc-Đĩnh-Chi cemetery . In Vietnamese vernacular, the name Đất Thánh Tây ("holy western earth") was common.

The cemetery was initially laid out as a military cemetery during the French Cochinchina campaign in 1859 to bury the French soldiers and sailors who fell during the capture of the Saigon Citadel . At that time, the cemetery was on the north-western outskirts (today part of the city ​​center ). From the late 1860s onwards, civilians were also buried in the cemetery, mostly French colonists, who at that time still fell victim to large numbers of tropical diseases such as malaria , cholera or dysentery . In addition to the French, many German merchants, who dominated the overseas trade of the Cochinchina colony at the time , were buried in the cemetery, as were some sailors from the Imperial Russian fleet. Around 1870, a smaller Vietnamese cemetery ( Cimetière annamite ) was laid out diagonally opposite to the north . In the 1880s, cemetery management was transferred from the Navy to the city authorities. In 1895 there were 239 soldiers' graves in the cemetery.

At the turn of the century, Saigon changed from a garrison town to a splendid colonial metropolis. The cemetery has now become the preferred final resting place for members of the French upper class in Indochina , who had magnificent tombs erected. The military graves, on the other hand, were hardly cared for and the graves of poorer people were often lifted after a few years to make room for more elite graves - a practice that aroused considerable criticism at the time. In the early 1920s, the Rue de Bangkok , at the end of which was the main gate of the cemetery, was renamed Rue de Massiges after a battle site during the First World War . The cemetery was therefore also known as Cimetière (de la rue) de Massiges . In addition to the French, members of the Francophile Catholic Vietnamese upper class increasingly chose the cemetery as their final resting place.

In 1955, after the French were defeated in the Indochina War , both the street and the cemetery were renamed by the new South Vietnamese authorities after the medieval scholar Mạc Đĩnh Chi . For the next two decades, the cemetery served as the preferred resting place of the South Vietnamese ruling class. In November 1963, the overthrown and murdered President Ngô Đình Diệm and his brother, who had also been killed, were buried in unmarked graves here (both were Catholics). The putschist involved and later President Nguyễn Văn Thiệu allegedly had parts of the western wall of the cemetery torn down in 1971 on the advice of a Cao Đài priest in order to calm Diệm's mind.

today's Lê-Văn-Tám-Park (picture from 2010)

With the fall of Saigon in 1975, the cemetery also came under communist administration. In 1983 the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City decided to close and destroy the cemetery, which, due to its splendid upper-class tombs, stood as a symbol of the “decadence of the West” and a monument to the colonial era. The members were given two months to their deceased relatives umbetten to let then the plant was leveled by bulldozers. The remains of the French soldiers were transferred to the Indochina Memorial in Fréjus . The mausoleum ( Lăng Cha Cả ) of Pierre Pigneau de Behaine was also destroyed at this time ; In 1986 the city's new French military cemetery at Bảy Hiền and the Christian cemetery at Vũng Tau followed .

The Lê-Văn-Tám -Park ( Công viên Lê Văn Tám ), named after a (presumably fictional) resistance fighter against the French colonial power, was set up on the area of ​​the leveled Saigon cemetery, and a statue was erected there in the center. However, the park initially found little acceptance among the population, as numerous ghost stories circulated about the place. Since 2010, a large multi-storey car park including a shopping center is to be built under the park and the above-ground park will also be completely redesigned and renewed in the process.

Famous graves

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