Workers from the town of Nordhausen bury corpses of prisoners found at Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in mass graves. Rare colour photograph taken in 1945. Photo credit: USHMM

A mass grave of the Polish officers murdered in the Katyń massacre of 1940

A boy working in the Warsaw ghetto cemetery drags a corpse to the edge of the mass grave where it will be buried. September 1941. Credit: USHMM, Guenther Schwarberg

A mass grave is a grave containing multiple, usually unidentified human corpses. There is no strict definition of the minimum number of bodies required to constitute a mass grave. A mass grave inside Bergen-Belsen, 1945. ... Year 1945 (MCMXLV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar). ... Image File history File links Nordhausenmassgrave. ... Image File history File links Nordhausenmassgrave. ... Roland statue in Nordhausen Twinning The city is twinned with Bet Shemesh in Israel Charleville-Mézières in France Bochum Ostrów Wielkopolski in Poland Nordhausen is a city of about 45,000 people at the southern border of the Harz mountains, in the state of Thuringia, Germany. ... Categories: Stub | Nazi concentration camps ... Year 1945 (MCMXLV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar). ... Katyn Massacre, picture published by German propaganda during the World War II, author unknown. ... Katyn Massacre, picture published by German propaganda during the World War II, author unknown. ... Photo taken in 1943, during the Nazi German exhumations of the Polish dead from the Katyn forest sites. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 600 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (742 × 741 pixel, file size: 308 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)A boy working in the Warsaw ghetto cemetery drags a corpse to the edge of the mass grave where it will be buried. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 600 × 599 pixelsFull resolution (742 × 741 pixel, file size: 308 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)A boy working in the Warsaw ghetto cemetery drags a corpse to the edge of the mass grave where it will be buried. ...

Mass or communal burial was a common practice before the development of a dependable crematory chamber by an Italian named Brunetti in 1873.

In Paris, the practice of mass burial, and in particular, the condition of the infamous cemetery Des Innocents, led Louis XVI to eliminate Parisian cemeteries. The remains were removed and dumped into the Paris underground forming the early Catacombs. Les Innocents alone had 6,000,000 dead to remove. Burial commenced outside of the city limits in what is now Pere Lachaise cemetery. The Saints Innocents Cemetery (Fr: Cimetière des Innocents) is a defunct cemetery in Paris, named as a memorial to the story of the Biblical Massacre of the Innocents. ... Louis XVI Louis XVI (August 23, 1754 - January 21, 1793), was King of France and Navarre from 1774 until 1791, and then King of the French in 1791-1792. ... Catacombs Paris Catacombs Rome - entrance Catacombs Rome - entrance (detail) Catacombs Lima. ... The Cimetière du Père Lachaise is the largest cemetery in Paris, and one of the most famous cemeteries in the world. ...

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. In disasters, mass graves are used for infection and disease control. An infection is the detrimental colonization of a host organism by a foreign species. ... The term disease refers to an abnormal condition of an organism that impairs function. ...

The debate surrounding mass graves amongst epidemiologists includes whether or not, in a natural disaster, to leave corpses for individual traditional 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 in mass casualty events are very limited and that mass graves might cause more harm than good.^{[citation needed]} Epidemiology (Greek epi = upon, among; demos = people, district; logos = word, discourse), defined literally, is the study of epidemics in humans. ... Winter is one of the four seasons of temperate zones. ... Dysentery (formerly known as flux or the bloody flux) is the term for tenesmus (painful straining to pass stool), cramping, and frequent, small-volume severe diarrhea associated with blood in the feces. ... Types 5-7 on the Bristol Stool Chart are often associated with diarrhea Diarrhea (in American English) or diarrhoea (in British English) is a condition in which the sufferer has frequent watery, loose bowel movements (from the Greek word διάρροια; literally meaning through-flowing). Acute infectious diarrhea is a common cause... Tetanus is a medical condition that is characterized by a prolonged contraction of skeletal muscle fibers. ... // After disasters with extensive loss of life due to trauma, many resources are often expended on burying the dead quickly, and applying disinfectant to bodies, to prevent disease. ...

Although mass graves can be used during major conflicts, they are more usually seen after natural disasters such as a major famine, epidemic, or natural disaster. In such cases, there is a breakdown of the social infrastructure that would enable disposal of bodies. A famine is a social and economic crisis that is commonly accompanied by widespread malnutrition, starvation, epidemic and increased mortality. ... In epidemiology, an epidemic (from [[Latin language] epi- upon + demos people) is a disease that appears as new cases in a given human population, during a given period, at a rate that substantially exceeds what is expected, based on recent experience (the number of new cases in the population during... Mount Pinatubo eruption, 1991 A natural disaster is the consequence of a natural hazard (e. ...

Mass grave mapping teams have located 125 Khmer Rouge prison facilities and corresponding gravesites to date in Cambodia while researching the Killing Fields. During the Stalin era 65,000,000 people were exterminated in Russia. In 2002, St.Petersburg law enforcement officers were still discovering mass graves such as the one at the Rzhevsky artillery range that holds about 30,000 people. Flag of Democratic Kampuchea Photos of genocide victims on display at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum The Khmer Rouge (Khmer: ) was the ruling political party of Cambodia -- which it renamed to Democratic Kampuchea -- from 1975 to 1979. ... See also: The Killing Fields. ... Iosif (usually anglicized as Joseph) Vissarionovich Stalin (Russian: Иосиф Виссарионович Сталин), original name Ioseb Jughashvili (Georgian: იოსებ ჯუღაშვი&#4314... Saint Petersburg (Russian: Санкт-Петербу́рг, English transliteration: Sankt-Peterburg), colloquially known as Питер (transliterated Piter), formerly known as Leningrad (Ленингра́д, 1924–1991) and...

It is commonly said that Mozart was buried in a mass grave in Austria in 1791. In the late 18th century they usually did not set signs on individual graves in Austria. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (January 27, 1756 – December 5, 1791) was one of the most significant and influential of all composers of Western classical music. ...

See also

• Mass graves in Iraq
• Chechnya mass graves
• Health risks from dead bodies
• The Killing Fields
• Plague pit
• Mass graves in the Soviet Union
• Mirusuvil mass grave

Mass graves in Iraq have become well known since the US led invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... // After disasters with extensive loss of life due to trauma, many resources are often expended on burying the dead quickly, and applying disinfectant to bodies, to prevent disease. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Plague pit is the informal term used to refer to the mass graves of the victims of disease epidemics such as the Black Death. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... The exumed bodies from the mass grave were reburied with the help of Human Rights groups[1], source chrdsrilanka. ...

References

1. ^  Berenbaum, Michael, editor. Witness to the Holocaust. New York: HarperCollins. 1997. pp. 112 - 113

• Krupa, Frederique. Paris: Urban Sanitation Before the 20th Century

• Pravda.ru

• Mekong.net

External links

• Mass Graves of IRAQ
• Article about the effects of mass graves after the 2003 Iran earthquake.
• General article about mass graves