Senegalese Tata of Chasselay

About

The Chasselay Tata, officially the national necropolis of Chasselay, is a military cemetery of the Second World War in Chasselay, Rhone. In this national necropolis 196 people were buried fighting for France (188 tirailleurs from French West Africa, 6 soldiers from French North Africa, and 2 legionnaires), all massacred by the German army in June 1940 during the battle of the Rhône valley. According to photographs found in 2019, this massacre seems to be attributable to the 10th Panzerdivision of the Wehrmacht, which is as imbued with racist ideology as well as the SS Totenkopf division to which responsibility has long been attributed.

This necropolis was built in West Africa's architectural style. The word tata, of Mandingue origin, means "fortified enclosure" in this language and others like Wolof, but it takes here, according to the builder of the place Jean-Baptiste Marchiani, the meaning of "sacred enclosure" in which the warriors who died in battle are buried.