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Origin and history

The Cemetery of the Forgotten, located in Cadillac-sur-Garonne in Gironde, is a burial place created in 1920 to house the remains of the deceased patients at the alienated asylum of the city. This project was motivated by the inadequacy of the communal cemetery, particularly because of the large number of deaths among First World War veterans, victims of psychiatric disorders called "brain mutilated". A square of 98 graves is specifically dedicated to them, marked by a commemorative plaque.

The cemetery, which has about 900 burials, was used until 2000. The majority of the graves, in the middle of the earth, were marked by iron crosses whose nameplates have often disappeared. In 1994, the site became the property of the commune. It was partially listed as a historical monument in 2010 to preserve its fence wall, threatened by a project of transformation into a parking lot. A restoration in 2020 honoured the memory of the buried, including the 160 veterans whose names and nationalities were engraved on a Corten steel wall.

Among the buried are at least 88 Senegalese tirailers, as well as German, Austrian and Hungarian prisoners of war. In 2021, a new Order of Registration for Historic Monuments repealed the 2010 order, consolidating the protection of the site. In addition, recent research has identified 3,401 civilians buried in the commune since 1922, whose names were added on a second memorial wall. The cemetery is now run by a local association, the Friends of the Cemetery of the Forgotten of Cadillac.

This place bears witness to the history of psychiatry in France, especially through the consequences of the trauma of the Great War. He inspired literary works, such as Les enfants de Cadillac (François Noudelmann, 2021) and Cadillac (Gilles Ortlieb, 2022), and was the subject of documentaries, including a report by Michel Benezech, former intern of the psychiatric hospital.

The Cemetery of the Forgotten also illustrates the diversity of buried populations, reflecting the human tragedies associated with world conflicts and living conditions in asylums in the twentieth century. Its designation as historic monuments underscores its heritage and memorial importance, both for the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region and for French medical and social history.

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