Archie wrote: ↑Tue Sep 09, 2025 4:21 am
bombsaway wrote: ↑Mon Sep 08, 2025 7:15 pm
lol 2 or 3 bodies per cubic meter is a ridiculous threshold to set.
Except when you look at examples of actual, confirmed mass graves, 2-3 bodies per cu meter is not ridiculous at all.
See here: "Real World Mass Grave Data"
https://www.codohforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=189
A quick look at a photo of an exhumed mass grave might help clarify why the examples in the linked thread are not actually comparable. Scroll down and you'll see a photo of the mass grave at Serniki, not far from Pinsk, which was exhumed by Australian war crimes investigators in 1990
https://grahamtblewitt.com/the-serniki-mass-grave/
The top layer of bodies was examined, counting 553 skeletons, for evidence of their killing - through 9mm rounds manufactured between 1935 and 1941 in Germany, and 7.62mm Soviet rounds, as were used in the captured Soviet rifles used by the Schutzmannschaften.
The web page does not give the dimensions, but these are given in the longer article by Peggy O’Donnell, ‘“Gateway to Hell”: A Nazi Mass Grave, Forensic Scientists, and an Australian War Crimes Trial’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 32/3 (2018), 361–383, here 370.
Within a week of the Australians’ arrival in Serniki, they had created a pit 37.5 meters long, 3.6 meters wide, and 3 meters deep—very close to the size Fyodor Polyukhovich had remembered. The walls of the pit sloped outward at a 10-degree angle.
This is 405 cubic metres, which is larger than the probable original grave as the soil was sandy, and from the photo one can see also that the investigators were digging around the skeletons and remains.
There were certainly more corpses under the top layer (p.371):
The scientists laid white tape at one-meter intervals along the width and length of the grave, dividing it into meter square sectors to help them track their work, and to ensure an accurate count of the number of corpses. As the video camera rolled, members of the Australian and Soviet forensic teams started working at opposite ends of the grave. They picked up each skull on the top layer of bodies, cleaned it, examined it to determine age, sex, and cause of death, and then replaced it. All told, the forensic teams examined 553 sets of remains. They did not attempt to dig below the top layer of bodies, although it was clear to Wright and Oettle that more lay underneath. It was feasible, they concluded, that the grave contained the 850 victims cited in the charges against Polyukhovich. In particular, at the southern end of the grave, where the Australian team was working, it appeared that there were at least two layers. Wright later testified that he believed there were more bodies, “particularly at the southern end, [but] the density of bones, fat, and other soft
tissues made it, in my opinion, too unpleasant to remove the bodies.” In an interview years later, one of the Australian scientists recalled that the team was able to find enough of the required information for trial simply by analyzing the top layer: “It is not always necessary to exhume but it is often ruthlessly carried out when it needn’t be.”
The
depth of the grave at 3m for only a few layers of bodies - assuming that the 'topmost layer' likely included a merged set of layers from the original mass execution, but even if there were only two layers, the point stands - is why the dimensions of 405 cbm compare with 553 counted sets of remains and 850 noted by eyewitnesses in the charges, which would be your 2-3 bodies per cubic metre.
Mass graves intended for permanent burial of a one off collection of corpses must be dug deeper. As with the proverbial six feet under (1.8288 metres), deep burial is required to seal off decomposition and prevent access to the corpses by wild animals.
This in a nutshell explains the much lower apparent density of many mass graves.
Mass grave spaces being used serially, which could apply to some camps for Soviet POWs in the winter of 1941-2, but certainly applied to sites of serial executions, will be opened to the elements for prolonged periods and require quicklime to counteract the smell of decomposition, which is what is certainly reported from several extermination camps. Chelmno took delivery of large quantities of quicklime in early 1942, which is documented (and noted in my article on Chelmno).
Testimonies from Belzec indicate overfilling of mass graves to take advantage of the swelling and collapse of decomposing corpses, to maximise the use of the spaces dug. The swelling and collapse of mass graves is reported widely enough to be confirmation of the logic of this, the essential dynamic for individual corpses, human and animal, beyond reasonable doubt.
The covering of the entire grave with a thin layer of sand is also reported, but not revisionist fantasies of a 10cm layer of sand between layers of corpses, or a huge depth of refill to seal off the corpses.
Citing SOPs isn't evidence but an argument by analogy, and one that is analogising to a historical human practice, not a scientific certainty. The swelling and collapse of decomposing corpses is a scientific certainty because it's been observed repeatedly and is noted widely in the forensic and archaeological literatures. What one finds in graves of different eras varies, and is historical-archaeological evidence. How cultures bury corpses likewise varies, and there will be exceptions to the usual rules (serial killers only digging a shallow grave, massacre sites being buried shallowly then requiring reburial, etc).
Belzec was clearly a major exception to the usual rule with mass graves, because it was reported as killing its victims serially within approximately nine months. What would make sense in Serniki or in the Sosenki forest outside Rivne (15,000 shot in November 1941, no 1005 exhumation) would not necessarily apply at Belzec.
Revisionists are still confronted with the problem of how to explain away all the other mass graves which were dug for burial (until some
but not all were exhumed by Aktion 1005), or indeed the other extermination sites using gas where there really don't appear to have been any major space issues (eg Maly Trostenets), and where open air cremation began early (eg Chelmno, Birkenau and Sobibor).
