A mass grave is a grave containing more than one human corpse. Mass graves are usually created after a group of people die, and there is a desire to bury the corpses quickly. This can occur after either a natural disaster, outbreak of disease, genocide or war.

The motivation for creating mass graves caused from a natural disaster is for infection control; the motivation for mass graves caused immediately after genocide is to hide war crimes.

The debate surrounding anonymous 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 a mass grave is less necessary.

One of the largest wartime mass graves is from World War II, at Belzec, in southeastern Poland, one of the 3,300 concentration camps. At this concentration camp, it is estimated that 600,000 corpses were burned, ground up and mixed into the camp's soil by the Nazis in an attempt to cover up a war crime.

See also

• Plague pit

External links

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