Cimetière de Chambière

Jewish cemetery and military cemetery.
From the 16th century onwards, and particularly during the last three major conflicts, the large Messinian garrison had to deal with the problem of its dead.
The current necropolis has existed since 1870, containing 5,014 individual graves and 11 ossuaries housing 13,015 French, Allied (1,700 Russians, 103 British, 88 Italians and 15 Belgians) and German soldiers and civilians.
During the previous three centuries, burials were most often carried out "outside the walls", on this isolated Chambière island, a wasteland prone to flooding from the Moselle, probably around the "Cornue géline", a tenant farm that became a hospital and then a military laundry. In 1733, the future Marshal de Belle-Isle had a "modern" hospital built at Pontiffroy, with its own burial ground. However, because of the hospital's small size and the imperatives of hygiene and urban planning, from the Revolution onwards, burials had to be made close to the original site.
After the tragedy of 1870, the Germans made Chambière their "garrison cemetery", open to families. Having lost this function after 1918, the site, now a national necropolis, had to be reorganized "within the walls", to accommodate war casualties only.