The Cimetière parisien de Pantin (sometimes known as cimetière parisien de Pantin-Bobigny) is one of the three Parisien cemeteries extra muros, located in the commune of Pantin which is in Seine-Saint-Denis, Île-de-France.
Since its opening, one million people have been buried in the cemetery, with nearly 5,000 interments taking place annually.
Notes
Pantin is the largest cemetery of Paris, both in number of graves and land area. It is also the largest cemetery in France. Pantin is a garden style burial ground with more than 8,000 trees and streets (a network of 32 kilometers of roads) that allow access by (motor) vehicles.[1]
It has nearly 200,000 graves, grouped in 180 divisions. The cemetery of Pantin is a vast necropolis. The oldest graves are in the first seventeen divisions.
Many of the burials are from the Jewish community (France has the largest Jewish community in Europe) and more recently from the ChineseBuddhist community.
Marthe Erbelding was buried here (her grave was cleared in 1960). Erbelding was an 11-year-old girl who was raped and murdered by a friend of her parents in 1907. The details of this gruesome crime were widely reported on. As a result the abolition of capital punishment was delayed for another 60 years.[2][3]
Ilan Halimi, the young FrenchJew, who was kidnapped and tortured to death in 2006, was temporarily buried in Pantin[4] before being reburied in Har HaMenuchot cemetery in Israel on February 9, 2007.[5]
It is one of the least known of the many Parisian cemeteries. The cemetery is a socio-economic reflection of the past decades, with graves for both rich and poor. It has been mentioned in songs such as Vincent Delerm's Les Trottoirs à l’envers, Pierre Perret's Ils s’aimaient and Mano Solo's Le Monde Entier.
In July 1973, one hundred Jewish tombstones were desecrated at the cemetery. In addition, some 60 Stars of David were either defaced or smeared.[6]
Notable interments
War graves
The cemetery contains a small British Commonwealth war graves plot, in Division 6, holding 93 servicemen of World War I, some casualties who died in military hospitals after evacuation from the Western Front, the later ones those stationed in the area after the Armistice. The plot is amidst French military war graves.[7]
Individual burials
Because even the cemetery does not seem to have an exhaustive list of burials and the amount of burials is vast, only a selection:
The main entrance to the Cimetière parisien de Pantin is on 164 Avenue Jean Jaurès (it is actually on Avenue du Cimetière Parisien), in Pantin (one of the banlieu of Paris). There is also a gate named Porte de Petits Points on Avenue du Général Leclerc (near the junction with Chemin des Vignes). There are two other gates, Porte de Pailleux and Porte d'Illustration, but these are only open on Rosh Hashanah and All Saints' Day. The cemetery is located next to Fort d'Aubervilliers.
