of certainty.
Potter’s fields, the final resting place for the anonymous are also used for mass burials at the expense of the local authorities. There are instances when such anonymous bodies could not later be exhumed and identified for law enforcement purposes. Almost all countries regard navy ships sunk during war as mass graves and forbid salvage and recovery of the remains. Instead of recovery, the United States Navy leave a plaque in remembrance of the ship and its crew by divers or submersibles, and families are invited to witness the ceremony.
Former large battle sites are also considered as mass graves. In the battle of Verdun during world war I, 800,000 soldiers form both sides perished in the battle, of whom the remains of 130,000 (again from both sides) were kept in the ossuary at Douamont. The task of recovery of remains continues, and every year more remains are kept in the ossuary’s vaults; Verdun is a mass grave of almost epic dimensions.
Catacombs are another form of mass burial sites; the catacombs are one such communal burial ground from the past. But the catacombs in Paris were used as a mass burial ground when remains from other cemeteries of the city marked for demolition (during the urban renewal by Baron Haussmann in 1850-70) were brought there. Judaism does not allow more than one body in a grave. But an exception to this has been made in the military cemetery in Jerusalem, and is called “kever ah-chim” (“grave of brothers” in Hebrew). There, two soldiers killed in a tank were buried together. As the bodies along with metallic parts of the tank became fused together to the extent that separate identification was not possible, the comrades along with the
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