The Communards' Wall at Père Lachaise (Paris) symbolizes the struggle for freedom and ideals. There, on May 28, 1871, one hundred and forty-seven fédérés, combatants of the Commune were shot and thrown into an open pit at the foot of the wall.
The Père-Lachaise cemetery was established in May 1804 in an area that had long belonged to the Jesuits and where Père Lachaise, confessor of Louis XIV, had resided at the end of his life. In the 19th century it was the cemetery of the aristocracy and the remains of famous people from previous eras were also transferred there.
It was there that during the Commune, in the spring of 1871, the last combatants took refuge. The Versaillese, masters of the place towards the end of the afternoon of May 28, shot all the prisoners there against a wall called since then Mur des Fédérés.
The massacre of the communards would then end but the repression continued. The toll, including the victims of the civil war and the repression that followed, was between 20,000 and 30,000 dead. Are counted:
* the pronunciation of a hundred executions of communards, 23 of which were effective;
* 410 hard labor sentences;
* 4,600 imprisonments;
* 322 bans;
* 4,586 deportations to prison, in New Caledonia, not far from Noumea and about 3,000 deportations to prison in Algeria. (as well as Île Madame);
* 56 placements in reformatories for "gavroches".
The drama, further amplified by the hateful hysteria of the media, can be read in these figures. But the Commune and the action of the Communards remained etched in our memories, at the very heart of the Workers' Movement which only took a few years to be reborn.
On May 23, 1880, two months before the amnesty of the Communards, the first parade in front of the Wall took place at Jules Guesde's call:25,000 people, an immortal red rose in their buttonholes, thus defied the police forces. And from then on, this "climb to the Wall" punctuated the history of workers, since every year, since 1880, the Left organizations have organized a demonstration in this symbolic place, the last week of May. Jean Jaurès, although foreign to the communard memory, went there several times, accompanied by Édouard Vaillant, by Jean Allemane and by thousands of socialist militants, trade unionists or anarchists.
A record demonstration took place there on May 24, 1936:600,000 people, led by Léon Blum and Maurice Thorez, in the midst of the strike movement, demonstrated there just a few weeks after the victory of the Popular Front. Another date, another highlight, in this place sung by Jules Jouy:"Tomb without cross and without chapel, without golden lilies, without stained glass, azure, when the people talk about it, they call it The Wall".