page_title: Mass grave
section_title: Thirty Years' War
hierarchical_section_title: Mass grave / Religious conflict / Thirty Years' War
caption_attribution_description: English: Supervised by American soldiers, German civilians from the town of Nordhausen bury the corpses of prisoners found at the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in mass graves. Rare colour photograph taken in 1945.
context_page_description: A mass grave is a grave containing multiple human corpses, which may or may not be identified prior to burial. 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. 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, in modern times they may be used after a famine, epidemic, or natural disaster. 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.
context_section_description: The Thirty Years' War was Europe's deadliest religious conflict. In the Battle of Lützen, 47 soldiers perished and were buried in a mass grave. 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.
caption: Workers from the town of Nordhausen bury corpses found at Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp in 1945.
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