Concentration camp

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A concentration camp is a large detention centre for political opponents, specific ethnic or religious groups, or other groups of people. Some concentration camps are designed for the of the interned (), or to engage them in forced labor (), while others are designed merely for confinement. The term is most likely to be applied when those interned are civilians and are selected by their conformance to broad criteria without process, as opposed to their being judged as individuals.

Although earlier camps like during the might qualify as concentration camps, in the English-speaking world, the term "concentration camp" was first used to describe camps operated by the in during the Second . Tens of thousands of civilians, and black workers from their farms, died as a result of diseases developed due to hunger, thirst, and poor sanitation. The term concentration camp was coined at this time to signify the "concentration" of a large number of people in one place, and was used to describe both the camps in and those established to support a similar anti-insurgency campaign in at roughly the same time (see below).

Over the course of the twentieth century, the arbitrary of civilians by the authority of the state became more common and reached an horrific climax with the practice of in the of the regime in Germany and the system of of the . As a result of this trend, the term concentration camp carries many of the connotations of extermination camp and is sometimes used synonymously. In technical discussion, however, it is important to understand that a concentration camp is not, by definition, a Nazi-style or Soviet-style .

It was made possible by the cheap availabily of barbed wire.

What follows is a brief history of concentration camps established by various countries and regimes.

Table of contents

Cuba

The word "concentration" in the context of forcible internment was first used during the Third Cuban War of Independence (1895-1898) by the then Spanish military governor, Valeriano Weyler. Weyler's policy of "reconcentracion" (in Spanish) resulted in the mass movement of rural populations to suburban areas of large cities, in an effort to cut off the widespread support the Cuban rebel government then enjoyed. The measure was a product of Spanish desperation at its army's mounting losses in men and territory to the rebels, and resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths (largely of women, children and the elderly) to disease, overcrowding, and exposure. The policy left a bitter legacy in the Cuban political consciousness, felt even to this day, and the worldwide horror that such an atrocity inspired (fomented by the of the newspapers) rallied support in the United States for a war against Spain.

The United Kingdom

The term "concentration camp" was first used by the British military during the . British forces rounded up the women and children as well as black people living on Boer land, and sent them to camps scattered around . Though they were not , the Boer camps were noted for their poor nutrition and bad hygiene, and the associated high mortality rates (28,000 women and children died). The Boer situation was only relieved when brought the conditions in the camps to the attention of the British public.

In the conduct of the , British armed forces established resettlement camps, later renamed new villages, having the characteristics of concentration camps. These were the forerunners of the strategic hamlets established by American armed forces during the . The chronic renaming is a clear consequence of the operation of a .

The British interned only 2,000 of the original 74,000 German and Austrian aliens that they rounded up after the start of World War II.

The 1970s internment of Irish nationals in camps by the government lead directly to .

The United States

The first large-scale confinement of a specific ethnic group in detention centers began in the summer of , when President ordered the to enforce the of by rounding up the into prison camps before relocating them. Although these camps were not intended to be , and people were not killed by official policy, many Indians were raped and/or murdered by US soldiers. A number died in these camps due to starvation and bad sanitary conditions. Ultimately, this culminated in the where a large number of Indians were exterminated.

Throughout the remainder of the Indian Wars, various populations of Native Americans were rounded up, trekked across country and put into detention, some for as long as 27 years.

The term Camp is often used as a euphemistic equivalent in other historical contexts, such as the imprisonment by the of people during both World War I and World War II, the internment of enemy aliens, and the exclusion and relocation (much of it forced) of American citizens born of enemy ancestry (including Japanese-Americans) during . The camps (such as ) in the 1940s did not involve extermination like Nazi death camps. Nevertheless, they remain a severe blot on the human rights record of the United States.

Some people claim that the housing of and fighters at the naval base in is a concentration camp. Even if this technically is correct, no government or neutral organization seems willing to characterize it as such; for instance, has criticized the US over allegations of mistreatment, but does not call Guantanamo a concentration camp.

Canada

During , thousands of were put into concentration camps as "enemy aliens" to perform forced labor in steel mills, forestry, etc. This is partly because Ukraine was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, partly because capitalists wanted to exploit them for cheap labor, partly because of endemic racism in Canada. Other Slavic citizens of Austria-Hungary were also interned, such as , and .

During World War II, Canada followed the U.S. lead in interning residents of Japanese and Italian ancestry.

Austria-Hungary

During the First World War, internment camps were set up, mostly for Serbs and other pro-Serbian Yugoslavs. Men, women, the children and the elderly were displaced from their homes and sent to concentrations camps all over the Empire such as (46,000), , , .

Germany

Concentration camps rose to notoriety during their use in by . The Nazi regime nominally maintained both kinds of concentration camps, - since the beginning of their regime in 1933 - and . The distinction between the two, in practice, was very small. Prisoners in Nazi labor camps could expect to be worked to death in short order, while prisoners in extermination camps usually died sooner in gas chambers or in other ways. Guards were known to engage in target practice, using their prisoners as targets.

The first Nazi camps were within Germany, and were primarily work camps. The worst excesses, including the murder of , , , , intellectuals, Prisoners of War and others, were to come later in the war at the area of . (See , .) It is estimated that up to ten million people died in Nazi concentration camps, of them six million were killed in the 15 larger ones.

Major Nazi Concentration Camps

Name of the camp	Date of establishment	Date of liberation	Estimated number of prisoners	Estimated number of deaths
		,		2,000,000
				600,000
		,		70,000
		,
				340,000
	,	,
		,	96,000	30,000
	summer		125,000	40,000
				1,380,000
	,	,	195,000
	, (Dora)	,	60,000	20,000
	,	,	40,000	25,000
	,	,	106,000	55,000
			150,000	35,000
		,	200,000	100,000
				250,000
	,	,	127.000	85.000
			140,000	35,000
	,			800,000

Fascist Italy

Major Fascist Italian Concentration Camps

Name of the camp	Date of establishment	Date of liberation	Estimated number of prisoners	Estimated number of deaths

regime in Croatia

Name of the camp	Date of establishment	Date of liberation	Estimated number of prisoners	Estimated number of deaths
	,	,		over 78,000
				8,500

Cambodia

under the regime: see the article .

Russia and Soviet Union

In , were known under the name .

In the , concentration camps were called simply camps, almost always plural ("lagerya"). These were used as forced , and were often filled with political prisoners. After 's book they have become known to the rest of the world as , after the branch of (state security service) that managed them. (In , the term is used to denote the whole system, rather than individual camps.) The Gulag system was exposed by in his work . An estimated forty million people died in the Soviet concentration camps. An extensive is being compiled based on some official sources.

A special kind of labor camps, sometimes called , were for forced engineering and scientific labor. They are treated in Solzhenitsyn's book . The famous Soviet rocket designer worked in a "sharashka"; so did and many other prominent Russians.

People's Republic of China

Concentration camps in the are called , which means "reform through labor". The communist-era camps began at least in the 1960s and were filled with anyone who had said anything critical of the government, or often just random people grabbed from their homes to fill quotas. The entire society was organized into small groups in which loyalty to the government was enforced, so that anyone with dissident viewpoints was easily identifiable for enslavement. These camps were modern slave , organized like factories. However most persons arrested for political reasons were released in the late-1970s at the start of the reforms.

There are accusations that Chinese labor camp produce products are often sold in foreign countries with the profits going to the PRC government. Products include everything from green tea to industrial engines to coal dug from mines. However, these products make up an insignificant amount of 's export output, and it has been argued that the use of prison labor for manufacturing is not itself a violation of human rights and that most prisoners in Chinese prisons are there for what are generally regarded as crimes in the West.

The use of prison labor is an interesting case study of the interaction between capitalism and prison labor. On the one hand, the downfall of socialism has reduced revenue to local governments increasing pressure for local governments to attempt to supplement their income using prison labor. On the other hand, prisoners do not make a good workforce, and the products produced by prison labor in China are of extremely low quality and have become unsalable on the open market in competition with products made by ordinary paid labor.

An insider's view from the 1950s to the 1990s is detailed in the books of , including Troublemaker and The Laogai. He spent almost all of his adult life as a prisoner in these camps for criticizing the government while he was a young student in college. He almost died several times, but eventually escaped to the US. Critics have argued that he far overstates the present role of Chinese and ignores the tremendous changes that have occurred in China since then.

See also:

Bosnia and Herzegovina

During the , there existed at least the following detention camps in , sorted in alphabetical order:

• (Bosnian Serb army)
• (Bosnian Muslim army)
• (Bosnian Croat army)
• (Bosnian Muslim army)
• (Bosnian Muslim army)
• (Bosnian Serb army)
• (Bosnian Serb army)
• (Bosnian Serb army)
• (Bosnian Croat army)
• (Bosnian Serb army)
• (Bosnian Croat army)
• (Bosnian Serb army)
• (Bosnian Muslim army)
• (Bosnian Serb army)
• (Bosnian Muslim army)
• (Bosnian Muslim army)

Numerous atrocities were committed against prisoners, subject to prosecution.

more should be written

North Korea

is known to operate five concentration camps, curently accommodating a total of over 200,000 prisoners, though the only one that has allowed outside access is Camp #15 in Yodok, South Hamgyong Province. Once condemned as political criminals in North Korea, the defendant and his or her family are incarcerated in one of the camps without trial and cut off from all outside contact. Prisoners reportedly work 14 hour days at hard labor and/or ideological re-education. Starvation and disease are commonplace. Political criminals invariably receive life sentences, however their families are usually released after 3 year sentences, if they pass political examinations after extensive study.

Concentration camps came into being in North Korea in the wake of the country's liberation from Japanese colonial rule at the end of World War II. Those persons considered "adversary class forces", such as landholders, Japanese collaborators, religious devotees and families of those who migrated to the South, were rounded up and detained in a large facility. Additional camps were established later in earnest to incarcerate political victims in power struggles in the late 1950s and 60s and their families and overseas Koreans who migrated to the North. The number of camps saw a marked increase later in the course of cementing the dictatorship and the succession. About a dozen concentration camps were in operation until the early 1990s, the figure of which has been curtailed to five today due to increasing criticism of the North's perceived human rights abuses from the international community and the North's internal situation.

Sweden

Several, in total eight, internment camps were used in during .

• The most famous is probably outside in where about 300-370 communists, syndicalists and pacifists were kept during the winter 1939-1940.
• Naartijärvi south of ,
• Öxnered at ,
• Grytan outside and
• a boat for sailors outside .
• Vindeln: constructed in in 1943
• Stensele: constructed in in 1943

This is only 7. One is missing, or the total above is wrong.

In May 1941 a total of ten camps for 3000-3500 were planned, but towards the end of 1941 the plans were put on ice and in 1943 the last camp was closed down.

The navy had some special detainment ships for communists and "troublemakers". Is this the Dalarö boat? If so, that's only 1, not plural.

Finland

In the aftermath of the of 1917-1918, some 75,000 suspected Reds were incarcerated in concentration camps. While 125 Red prisoners were convicted of and executed, an estimated 12,000 died of disease and starvation. (This was not entirely due to sheer sadism, since was still raging and the entire country was wracked by food shortages.)

When the Army temporarily occupied eastern during the , several concentration camps were set up for Russian civilians. The first camp was set up , in . Camps were also set up in other parts of the occupied territories. The ultimate goal was to move the Russian speaking population to German occupied Russia in exchange for any population from these areas.

Population in Finnish camps:

• , - 13,400
• , - 21,984
• , - 15,241

• , - 14,917

France

Le was the only concentration camp on French soil during the Second World War. The three departments of Alsace-Lorraine (Haut-Rhin, Bas-Rhin and Moselle) were annexed and incorporated into the Third Reich.

As the network of concentration camps in occupied Europe grew, this newly annexed part of the Nazi empire found itself home to a concentration camp of its own.

Chile

Under 's , the stadium served as concentration camp for political opponents.

Netherlands

During the , one of few official concentration camp complexes in western Europe located outside of Germany and Austria was in , known in German as Herzogenbusch, see . Still another one was camp , which served as a transit camp (Durchgangslager) of Jews (Dutch and refugees) and to extermination camps of and .

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