concentration camp

{{Short description|Form of internment camp for political prisoners}}

{{Not to be confused with|Extermination camp}}File:Boercamp1.jpg women and children in a Second Boer War concentration camp in South Africa (1899–1902)|270x270px]]

A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or minority ethnic groups, on the grounds of state security, or for exploitation or punishment.{{Cite web|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/concentration-camp|title=Concentration camp | Facts, History, Maps, & Definition | Britannica|website=www.britannica.com}} Prominent examples of historic concentration camps include the British confinement of non-combatants during the Second Boer War, the mass internment of Japanese-Americans by the US during the Second World War, the Nazi concentration camps (which later morphed into extermination camps), and the Soviet labour camps or gulag.

History

=Definition=

The term concentration camp originates from the Spanish–Cuban Ten Years' War when Spanish forces detained Cuban civilians in camps in order to more easily combat guerrilla forces. Over the following decades the British during the Second Boer War and the Americans during the Philippine–American War also used concentration camps.

The term "concentration camp" and "internment camp" are used to refer to a variety of systems that greatly differ in their severity, mortality rate, and architecture; their defining characteristic is that inmates are held outside the rule of law.{{cite book |last=Stone |first=Dan |author-link=Dan Stone (historian) |title=Concentration Camps: A Very Short Introduction |date=2015 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-879070-9 |pages=122–123|quote=Concentration camps throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are by no means all the same, with respect either to the degree of violence that characterizes them or the extent to which their inmates are abandoned by the authorities... The crucial characteristic of a concentration camp is not whether it has barbed wire, fences, or watchtowers; it is, rather, the gathering of civilians, defined by a regime as de facto ‘enemies’, in order to hold them against their will without charge in a place where the rule of law has been suspended.}} Extermination camps or death camps, whose primary purpose is killing, are also imprecisely referred to as "concentration camps".{{cite web |title=Nazi Camps |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-camps?series=10 |publisher=United States Holocaust Memorial Museum |access-date=3 October 2020}}

File:Weyler reconcentrados.png, 1896]]

File:Al-Magroon Concentration Camp.jpg, one of the Italian concentration camps in Libya during the Italian colonization of Libya.]]

File:Tampere prison camp women.jpg of Tampere in 1918, several months after the Finnish Civil War]]

File:Buchenwald Slave Laborers Liberation.jpg near Weimar photographed after their liberation by the Allies on 16 April 1945]]

The American Heritage Dictionary defines the term concentration camp as: "A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in a group which the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable."{{Cite web |title=Concentration camp |url=http://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=concentration+camp&submit.x=-664&submit.y=-210 |access-date=22 July 2014 |publisher=American Heritage Dictionary}}

Although the first example of civilian internment may date as far back as the 1830s,{{Cite book |last=James L. Dickerson |title=Inside America's Concentration Camps: Two Centuries of Internment and Torture |publisher=Chicago Review Press |year=2010 |isbn=978-1-55652-806-4 |page=29}} the English term concentration camp was first used in order to refer to the reconcentration camps (Spanish:reconcentrados) which were set up by the Spanish military in Cuba during the Ten Years' War (1868–1878).{{Cite book |title=The Columbia Encyclopedia: Concentration Camp |date=2008 |publisher=Columbia University Press |edition=Sixth}}{{Cite news |date=2 November 2017 |title=Concentration Camps Existed Long Before Auschwitz |work=Smithsonian |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/concentration-camps-existed-long-before-Auschwitz-180967049/}} The label was applied yet again to camps set up by the United States during the Philippine–American War (1899–1902).{{Cite book |last1=Storey |first1=Moorfield |url=https://archive.org/stream/secretaryrootsr00codmgoog#page/n8/mode/2up |title=Secretary Root's record. "Marked severities" in Philippine warfare. An analysis of the law and facts bearing on the action and utterances of President Roosevelt and Secretary Root |last2=Codman |first2=Julian |publisher=George H. Ellis Company |year=1902 |location=Boston |pages=89–95 |author-link=Moorfield Storey |author-link2=Julian Codman}} And expanded usage of the concentration camp label continued, when the British set up camps during the Second Boer War (1899–1902) in South Africa for interning Boers during the same time period.{{Cite web |title=Documents re camps in Boer War |url=http://www-sul.stanford.edu/africa/boers.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070609212833/http://www-sul.stanford.edu/africa/boers.html |archive-date=9 June 2007 |publisher=sul.stanford.edu}} The German Empire also established concentration camps during the Herero and Namaqua genocide (1904–1907); the death rate of these camps was 45 per cent, twice that of the British camps.{{cite book |last1=Stone |first1=Dan|author-link=Dan Stone (historian) |title=Concentration Camps: A Very Short Introduction |date=2017 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-103502-9 |language=en|pages=19–20}}

=Russian camps=

The Russian Empire used forced exile and forced labour as forms of judicial punishment. Katorga, a category of punishment which was reserved for those who were convicted of the most serious crimes, had many of the features which were associated with labor-camp imprisonment. According to historian Anne Applebaum, katorga was not a common sentence; approximately 6,000 katorga convicts were serving sentences in 1906 and 28,600 in 1916.Applebaum, Anne. Gulag: A History. Anchor, 2004, pp. xxxi These camps served as a model for political imprisonment during the Soviet period. In the midst of the Russian Civil War, Lenin and the Bolsheviks established "special" prison camps, separate from its traditional prison system and under the control of the Cheka.Applebaum, Anne. "Gulag: A History." Anchor, 2003, pp. 12The Lost Literature of Socialism, George Watson These camps, as Lenin envisioned them, had a distinctly political purpose.Applebaum, Anne. "Gulag: A History." Anchor, 2003, pp. 5 These concentration camps were not identical to the Stalinist, but were introduced to isolate war prisoners given the extreme historical situation following World War 1.{{cite book |last1=Krausz |first1=Tamás |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=z23IBgAAQBAJ&dq=lenin+concentration+camps+stalinist+obviously&pg=PA512 |title=Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography |date=27 February 2015 |publisher=NYU Press |isbn=978-1-58367-449-9 |page=512 |language=en}} In 1929, the distinction between criminal and political prisoners was eliminated,Applebaum, Anne. Gulag: A History. Anchor, 2003, pp. 50. administration of the camps was turned over to the Joint State Political Directorate, and the camps were greatly expanded to the point that they comprised a significant portion of the Soviet economy.{{cite journal |last=Ellman |first=Michael |year=2002 |title=Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments |url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/ELM-Repression_Statistics.pdf |journal=Europe-Asia Studies |volume=54 |issue=2 |pages=1151–1172 |doi=10.1080/0966813022000017177 |s2cid=43510161 |access-date=August 14, 2011}} This Gulag system consisted of several hundred{{Cite web |date=2024-06-21 |title=Gulag {{!}} Definition, History, Prison, & Facts {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/place/Gulag |access-date=2024-07-15 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}} camps for most of its existence and detained some 18 million from 1929 until 1953.{{Cite web |date=2004 |title=Gulag: A History, by Anne Applebaum (Doubleday) |url=https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/anne-applebaum |access-date=2019-11-13 |website=The Pulitzer Prizes}} As part of a series of reforms during the Khrushchev Thaw, the Gulag shrank to a quarter of its former size and receded in its significance in Soviet society.Marc Elie. Khrushchev's Gulag: the Soviet Penitentiary System after Stalin's death, 1953-1964. Denis Kozlov et Eleonory Gilburd. [https://hal.science/hal-00859338/ The Thaw: Soviet Society and Culture during the 1950s and 1960s], Toronto University Press, pp.109-142, 2013, 978-1442644601. ⟨hal-00859338⟩

=Nazi German camps=

The Nazi Germany first established concentration camps for tens of thousands of political prisoners, primarily members of the Communist Party of Germany and the Social Democratic Party of Germany, in 1933, detaining tens of thousands of prisoners.White, Joseph Robert (2009). "Introduction to the Early Camps". Early Camps, Youth Camps, and Concentration Camps and Subcamps under the SS-Business Administration Main Office (WVHA). Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945. Vol. 1. Indiana University Press. pp. 3–16. ISBN 978-0-253-35328-3. Many camps were closed following releases of prisoners at the end of the year, and the camp population would continue to dwindle through 1936; this trend would reverse in 1937, with the Nazi regime arresting tens of thousands of "anti-socials", a category that included Romani people as well as the homeless, mentally ill, and social non-conformists. Jews were increasingly targeted beginning in 1938. Following the Nazi invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II, the camps were massively expanded and became increasingly deadly.Wachsmann, Nikolaus (2009). "The Dynamics of Destruction: The Development of the Concentration Camps, 1933–1945". In Jane Caplan; Nikolaus Wachsmann (eds.). Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories. Routledge. pp. 17–43. {{ISBN|978-1-135-26322-5}}. At its peak, the Nazi concentration camp system was extensive, with as many as 15,000 camps{{cite web |title=Concentration Camp Listing |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/cclist.html |publisher=Editions Kritak |location=Belgium |quote=Sourced from Van Eck, Ludo Le livre des Camps}} and {{cite book | author = Gilbert, Martin | title = Atlas of the Holocaust | location = New York | publisher= William Morrow| year = 1993| isbn = 0-688-12364-3}}. In this online site are the names of 149 camps and 814 subcamps, organized by country. and at least 715,000 simultaneous internees.{{cite book |last=Evans |first=Richard J. |title=The Third Reich in Power |publisher=Penguin Group |year=2005 |isbn=978-0-14-303790-3 |location=New York}} About 1.65 million people were registered prisoners in the camps, of whom about a million died during their imprisonment. The total number of casualties in these camps is difficult to determine, but the deliberate policy of extermination through labor in many of the camps was designed to ensure that the inmates would die of starvation, untreated disease and summary executions within set periods of time.{{cite book |last=Marek Przybyszewski |url=http://www.historia.terramail.pl/opracowania/nowozytna/zamek_centrum_administracji.html |title=IBH Opracowania – Działdowo jako centrum administracyjne ziemi sasińskiej |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101022004220/http://www.historia.terramail.pl/opracowania/nowozytna/zamek_centrum_administracji.html |archive-date=2010-10-22 |language=pl |trans-title=Działdowo as the centre of local administration |via=Internet Archive}} In addition to the concentration camps, Nazi Germany established six extermination camps, specifically designed to kill millions of people, primarily by gassing.{{Cite book |last1=Robert Gellately |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1toqgWg8ROUC&q=forced+labor |title=Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany |last2=Nathan Stoltzfus |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-691-08684-2 |page=216}}{{Cite magazine |author=Anne Applebaum |url=http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2001/oct/18/a-history-of-horror |title=A History of Horror{{!}} Review of Le Siècle des camps by Joël Kotek and Pierre Rigoulot |date=18 October 2001 |magazine=The New York Review of Books}} As a result, the term "concentration camp" is sometimes conflated with the concept of an "extermination camp" and historians debate whether the term "concentration camp" or the term "internment camp" should be used to describe other examples of civilian internment.{{cite web|url=https://www.npr.org/blogs/ombudsman/2012/02/10/146691773/euphemisms-concentration-camps-and-the-japanese-internment|title=Euphemisms, Concentration Camps And The Japanese Internment|website=npr.org|date=10 February 2012 |last1=Schumacher-Matos |first1=Edward |last2=Grisham |first2=Lori}}

=Other camps=

Before and during World War II, concentration camps were established by various authorities. In the late 1920s, the Dutch colonial government established the Boven-Digoel concentration camp in the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) to intern Indonesian nationalist leaders and political dissidents.{{cite book |last1=Shiraishi |first1=Takashi |title=The Phantom World of Digul: Policing as politics in Colonial Indonesia, 1926-1941 |date=2021 |publisher=NUS Press |location=Singapore |isbn=9784814003624 |pages=29–35}} Also during World War II, concentration camps were established by Italian, Japanese, US, and Canadian forces.

The former label continues to see expanded use for cases post-World War II, for instance in relation to British camps in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960),{{Cite news |date=27 August 2019 |title=Museum of British Colonialism releases online 3D models of British concentration camps in Kenya |work=Morning Star |url=https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/museum-british-colonialism-releases-online-3d-models-british}}{{Cite news |date=31 December 1989 |title=The Mau Mau Rebellion |newspaper=The Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1989/12/31/the-mau-mau-rebellion/186d8bdf-1d95-4b63-9147-c67f20d7eb0f/}} and camps set up in Chile during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990).{{Cite news |date=7 September 2013 |title=Chilean coup: 40 years ago I watched Pinochet crush a democratic dream |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/07/chile-coup-pinochet-allende}} According to the United States Department of Defense as many as 3 million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups are being held in China's internment camps which are located in the Xinjiang region and which American news reports often label as concentration camps.{{Cite news |date=22 May 2019 |title=As the U.S. Targets China's 'Concentration Camps', Xinjiang's Human Rights Crisis is Only Getting Worse |work=Newsweek |url=https://www.newsweek.com/xinjiang-uyghur-crisis-muslim-china-1398782}}{{Cite news |date=17 November 2019 |title=Uighurs and their supporters decry Chinese 'concentration camps', 'genocide' after Xinjiang documents leaked |newspaper=The Washington Post |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/11/17/uighurs-their-supporters-decry-chinese-concentration-camps-genocide-after-xinjiang-documents-leaked/}} The camps were established in the late 2010s under Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping's administration.{{Cite news |last1=Ramzy |first1=Austin |last2=Buckley |first2=Chris |date=2019-11-16 |title='Absolutely No Mercy': Leaked Files Expose How China Organized Mass Detentions of Muslims |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html |access-date=2019-11-16 |issn=0362-4331}}{{Cite news |last=Kate O'Keeffe and Katy Stech Ferek |date=14 November 2019 |title=Stop Calling China's Xi Jinping 'President', U.S. Panel Says |work=The Wall Street Journal |url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/stop-calling-chinas-xi-jinping-president-u-s-panel-says-11573740000}} More recently, there have been instances of plots of land used as recruitment centers, for forced labor and extermination centers used by Mexican drug cartels, a prominent example being the Jalisco extermination camp, where a group looking for missing persons in Mexico found over 200 pairs of shoes and clandestine crematoriumshttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/14/world/americas/mexico-extermination-camp.html

References

External links

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