Mass grave
A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. Mass graves are usually created after many people die or are killed, and there is a desire to bury the corpses quickly for sanitation concerns. Although mass graves can be used during major conflicts such as war and crime, they may also be used after a famine, epidemic, or natural disaster. In disasters, mass graves are used temporarily for infection and disease control. In such cases, there is often a breakdown of the social infrastructure that would enable proper identification and the individual disposal of each body.
The United Nations has defined a criminal mass grave as a burial site containing three or more victims of execution, although an exact definition is not unanimously agreed upon.
Background
Definitions
Many different definitions have been given. The Bournemouth Protocol on Mass Grave Protection and Investigation focuses on circumstances that suggest that the deaths were unlawful. Older definitions focus on the ceremonial aspect, identifying a mass grave as one whose circumstances indicate "no reverence to the individual" was being shown during the burial, regardless of the manner of death.Health concerns
The debate surrounding mass graves among 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, which decreases the urgency to use mass graves. In modern times, a mass burial after a natural disaster may be a temporary expedience using individually bagged and tagged bodies to aid later retrieval, identification, and re-burial. A 2004 study indicates that the health risks from dead bodies after natural disasters are relatively limited.History
Mass or communal burial was a common practice before the development of a dependable crematory chamber by Ludovico Brunetti in 1873. In ancient Rome waste and dead bodies of the poor were dumped into mass graves called puticuli.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. Le Cimetière des Innocents alone had 6,000,000 dead to remove. Burial commenced outside the city limits in what is now Père Lachaise Cemetery.
War and mass violence
Mongol Invasion of Kievan Rus' (1223 to 1241)
A mass grave containing at least 300 bodies of victims of a Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus' in the year 1238, was discovered during an excavation in 2005, in Yaroslavl, Russia.Thirty Years' War (1618 to 1648)
A mass grave containing at least 47 soldiers that were brutally massacred following the Battle of Lützen of the Thirty Years' War, in the 17th century, which was Europe's deadliest religious conflict, was exhumed and reported in 2017 of PLOS One magazine. Archaeological and osteological analyses found that the soldiers ranged in age from 15–50 years. Most corpses had evidence of blunt force trauma to the head while seven men had stabbing injuries. Most of the soldiers died from gunshot wounds inflicted by pistols and cavalry carbines.Napoleonic Wars (1803 to 1815)
Several mass graves have been discovered that were the result of Napoleonic battles, mass graves were dug for expeditious disposal of deceased soldiers and horses. Often soldiers would plunder the substantial quantity of corpses prior to burial. Generally the mass graves were dug by soldiers or members of logistical corps. If these units were not available, the corpses would be left to rot or would be burned. Such examples have been found scattered throughout Europe.Finnish Civil War (1918)
Most mass graves dug during the Finnish Civil War hold Reds, the communist Soviet-backed side. Many mass graves are located in uninhabited areas near the sites of the execution including the Pohjois-Haaga mass grave, the Tammisaari mass grave and the Hyvinkää mass grave. The Mustankallio Cemetery holds a mass grave of Reds executed at the Hennala camp.Tulsa race massacre (1921)
Mass graves from the Tulsa race massacre were excavated in September 2023.Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939)
There are over 2,000 known mass graves throughout Spain from the Spanish Civil War wherein an estimated 500,000 people died between 1936 and 1939, and approximately 135,000 were killed after the war ended.Exhumations are ongoing. Some are conducted on the basis of information given in witnesses' and relatives' testimonies to the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica. These testimonies serve the purpose of helping geophysicists, archaeologists and forensic scientists to locate graves in order to identify bodies and allow families to rebury their relatives.
In the summer of 2008, information from these testimonies was used to unearth a 4 meter long square grave containing five skeletons near the town of San Juan del Monte. These five remains are believed to be of people that were kidnapped and killed after the 18 July 1936 military coup.
Another mass grave from the Spanish Civil War was found using Ground Penetrating Radar. Eyewitness accounts identified two potential locations for an unmarked grave in mountains of Lena in Northern Spain. Both sites were examined and an unmarked mass grave of approximately 1 meter by 5 meters was found.
Scientists investigated a second grave in 2023.
Second Sino-Japanese War (1937 to 1945)
Nanjing Massacre (December 1937 to January 1938)
The Nanjing Massacre was the mass murder of Chinese civilians in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, immediately after the Battle of Nanking and the retreat of the National Revolutionary Army in the Second Sino-Japanese War, by the Imperial Japanese Army. Beginning on 13 December 1937, the massacre lasted six weeks. The perpetrators also committed other war crimes such as mass rape, looting, torture, and arson. The massacre is considered to be one of the worst wartime atrocities.Datong Mass Grave
Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders
Holocaust (1941 to 1945)
The Mittelbau camps held about 60,000 prisoners of The Holocaust between August 1943 and March 1945. Conservative estimates assume that at least 20,000 inmates perished at the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. In early April 1945, an unknown number of prisoners perished in death marches following the evacuation of prisoners from Mittelbau camps to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany.In April 1945, U.S. soldiers liberated the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp. Only a few prisoners were still in the camp and the U.S. soldiers found the remains of approximately 1,300 prisoners in the Boelcke barracks. The names of these prisoners are unknown. Mass graves of the dead prisoners from the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp were dug by German civilians under orders from U.S. soldiers.
1948 Israeli Independence War
Hadassah medical convoy massacre (13 April 1948)
The Hadassah convoy massacre took place on 13 April 1948, when a convoy, escorted by Haganah militia, bringing medical and military supplies and personnel to Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus, Jerusalem, was ambushed by Arab forces. The attack killed 79 people, including: medics, associated personnel, insurgent fighters from the Haganah, and one British soldier. Dozens of unidentified bodies, burned beyond recognition, were buried in a mass grave in the Sanhedria Cemetery.Tantura massacre (23 May 1948)
was a Palestinian fishing village. Historians and Palestinian survivors claimed the men in Tantura were the victims of a mass execution after surrendering to the Alexandroni Brigade, and then their bodies buried in a mass grave. The grave in Tantura was investigated by Forensic Architecture, a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London. The grave is currently under the carpark of a popular Israeli beach.Korean War (1950 to 1953)
Approximately 100,000–200,000 civilians were killed at the start of the Korean War. These people were flagged by the government of South Korea for potentially collaborating with or sympathizing with North Korea. They were arrested and subsequently executed without trial. The sites where the massacres occurred were forbidden to the public. The bodies were considered to be traitors and the act of associating with them was considered treasonous. Despite this, families retrieved bodies from the shallow forbidden mass graves at the massacre sites.In 1956, bereaved families and villagers exhumed over 100 decomposed and unidentifiable bodies, ensuring that the complete human skeleton was intact. Each exhumed body was buried in its own "nameless grave" in a cemetery on Jeju Island. There is a granite memorial within the cemetery which bears the cemetery's local name, "Graves of One Hundred Ancestors and One Descendant." This name functions to express the opposite of how the genealogy should be as typically many descendants derive from one ancestor.
Vietnam War (1955 to 1975)
Numerous mass graves were discovered during the Vietnam War. In the fall of 1969, the body count unearthed from mass graves was around 2,800. During the months and years that followed the Battle of Huế, dozens of mass graves were discovered in and around Huế. The victims of the Huế massacre buried in mass graves included government officials, innocent civilians, women and children. They were tortured, executed and in some cases, buried alive. The estimated death toll was between 2,800 and 6,000 civilians and prisoners of war, or 5–10% of the total population of Huế.In Quang Ngai, a mass grave of 10 soldiers was discovered on 28 December 2011. These soldiers were buried alongside their belongings including wallets, backpacks, guns, ammunition, mirrors, and combs.
Other larger mass graves of Vietnamese soldiers are believed to exist, with hundreds of soldiers in each grave.