Mass grave

Mass grave of 26 victims of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, excavated in 2014.

Burial of the victims of Brunner Mine disaster, New Zealand 1896

Workers from the town of Nordhausen bury corpses found at Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Rare colour photograph taken in 1945.

Victims of bubonic plague in a mass grave from 1720–1721 in Martigues, France.

A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. Although mass graves can be used during major conflicts, in modern times they are more usually seen after events such as a major famine, epidemic, or natural disaster.

History

Mass graves are a variation on common burial, still occasionally practiced today under normal circumstances. Mass or communal burial was a common practice before the development of a dependable crematory chamber by Ludovico Brunetti in 1873.

In Paris, the practice of mass burial, and in particular, the condition of the Cimetière des Innocents, led Louis XVI to eliminate Parisian cemeteries. The remains were removed and placed in the Paris underground forming the early Catacombs. La Cimetière des Innocents alone had 6,000,000 dead to remove. Burial commenced outside the city limits in what is now Père Lachaise Cemetery.

Mass graves are usually created after a large number of people die or are killed, and there is a desire to bury the corpses quickly for sanitation concerns. In disasters, mass graves are used for infection and disease control. In such cases, there is often a breakdown of the social infrastructure that would enable proper identification and disposal of individual bodies.

The debate surrounding mass graves amongst epidemiologists includes whether or not, in a natural disaster, to leave corpses for traditional individual burials, or to bury corpses in mass graves. For example, if an epidemic occurs during winter, flies are less likely to infest corpses, reducing the risk of outbreaks of dysentery, diarrhea, diphtheria, or tetanus, so the use of mass graves is less important. Recent research indicates that the health risks from dead bodies after natural disasters are relatively limited.

The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of execution. Mass grave mapping teams have located 125 Khmer Rouge prison facilities and corresponding gravesites to date in Cambodia while researching the Killing Fields. Many mass graves were discovered after the Massacre at Huế during the Vietnam War.

See also

• Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death, earlier title: Massacre at Mazar
• Allegations of mass graves at Chemmani
• Chechnya mass graves
• Crab Island (Lake Champlain)
• Duffy's Cut
• Duraiappa stadium mass grave
• Guba mass grave
• Hart Island (New York)
• Maguindanao Massacre
• Mass graves in Iraq
• Mass graves in the Soviet Union
• Mirusuvil mass grave
• Plague pit
• Sooriyakanda mass grave
• Srebrenica massacre
• Trench
• Vukovar massacre

External links

• Mass Graves of the Indonesian Massacres of 1965 - 66
• Mass Graves of Iraq
• Article about the effects of mass graves after the 2003 Iran earthquake.
• General article about mass graves