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| French National Cemetery and Douaumont Ossuary at Verdun |
The American and British approaches to war burials were predicated on a tradition that demanded each fallen soldier was entitled to an individual resting place. Other nations, however, were inclined differently, especially regarding the unidentified individuals. In this article we look at the matter of mass burials.
Ossuaries, catacombs and charnel houses—crypts, chapels and caverns where human bones have been placed—are spread throughout Europe. Some are many hundreds of years old, others much more recent. As macabre as the idea may sound they are also a popular tourist attraction; the catacombs in Paris are perhaps the most well known and receive hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.
An ossuary is anything from a small box to a large building that contains human bones. A body is placed in a temporary grave, and then sometime later the bones are removed, cleaned, and placed in the ossuary—the final resting place. In many instances ossuaries were created as a solution to the lack of space in local cemeteries. Others, however, came about when human remains were recovered during the excavation of cemeteries—whether known or forgotten.
Ossuaries have a long history. The megalithic chambered tombs of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages are in all likelihood prehistoric antecedents of the more recent traditions we see in Europe. Three thousand years ago the ancient Persians, more specifically the Zoroastrians, placed the remains of their dead in a well or astudan—a literal translation being "the place for the bones."
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| Turkish Mass Grave, Gallipoli Peninsula |
Ossuaries are found throughout Europe, having been a common practice for both Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communities. There are chapels and crypts in churches and monasteries that house the bones of thousands of individuals. Caves, catacombs, and underground tunnels also make for ideal ossuaries. People were interred as and when they died, whereas some ossuaries are a kind of "mass grave," holding the bones of thousands of individuals who died as a result of anything from plagues to wars.
Perhaps one of the most poignant ossuaries in Europe is the Douaumont Ossuary in northeastern France. Situated on what was the battlefield of the World War One Battle of Verdun and next to the largest French military cemetery of the First World War, the ossuary holds the remains of both French and German soldiers who fought in that horrific battle.
From 21 February to 19 December in 1916 over 230,000 French and German men died in what has been called L’Enfer de Verdun (Hell of Verdun). The bones from at least 130,000 unidentified soldiers have been placed in specially designed alcoves at the Verdun ossuary, an odd mixture of fortress and cathedral architecture. Their names have been inscribed on the walls and vaulted ceiling of the ossuary. The large adjacent cemetery has the identified remains of 16,142 Frenchmen. L’ossuaire de Douaumont was inaugurated by French president Albert Lebrun on 7 August in 1932.
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Sacrario dei Caduti di Caporetto (Charnel House)
Kobarid, Slovenia |
The most prolific use of ossuaries for the burial of World War I soldiers was by the Italian Fascist government of Benito Mussolini. Once he came to power, his party looked upon itself as a sort of heir of the Great War's heritage and established a monopoly on commemorative monuments and burial sites for Italy's nearly 600,000 fallen. The theme for these new sites was not to be a sense of tragic sacrifice but one of the exaltations of a victorious nation. In 1920 the construction of the nation's first ossuary was started on Monte Pasubio, one of many dramatic mountain top battlefields of the war. However, the 19th-century look of the building did not meet the expectations of the Fascists when they took power. A new approach was needed. A spectacular series of ossuaries were built, right up to the eve of the Second World War.
Source: Archeology-Travel Website of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
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