Concentration camp

Concentration camp is a place where people are imprisoned, and in some cases killed, without legal proceedings. Many countries have imprisoned people in concentration camps because of their political views, religious convictions, ethnic background, or social attitudes. The best-known camps were those operated by the Nazi government in Germany, which was in power from 1933 to 1945. The Nazis imprisoned and killed millions of people in concentration camps, first in Germany and later in German-occupied Europe.

Nazi concentration camps

were created soon after Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933. The Nazis established the first permanent camp in Dachau, Germany, near Munich, in March 1933. Nazi camps held socialists, Communists, and other political prisoners; Jews; gay people; priests and ministers; and many others. After World War II started in September 1939, the Nazis increasingly used camp inmates for slave labor.

In 1941, the Nazis began to build Vernichtungslager (death camps). These camps were established for the purpose of killing Jews with poison gas and other methods. By the end of 1942, the Nazis had created six death camps, all in German-occupied Poland—Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka.

The most notorious of these death camps was the camp at Auschwitz. During World War II, the Nazis murdered about 1¹/₄ million people there. The victims were mostly Jews, but also included Poles, Roma (sometimes called Gypsies), and Soviet prisoners of war.

Auschwitz was not just a death camp. It also included a slave labor complex. After prisoners arrived at Auschwitz, the Nazis took their clothes and other possessions. The camp officials sent the old and the very young, the weak, women with children, and people with disabilities directly to gas chambers. Able-bodied prisoners worked in the slave labor complex. When they became weak or ill, the guards killed them or forced them to work until they died. After the prisoners were dead, the Nazis removed any gold teeth from the corpses and burned the bodies.

Other concentration camps.

During World War II, the United States government imprisoned more than 110,000 Japanese Americans, including more than 70,000 U.S. citizens, in what the government called “relocation centers.” The United States and Japan were at war, and U.S. officials responded to public fears that Japanese Americans threatened national security. Historians now believe that the Japanese American internment (the confining of people to a certain area) was one of the worst violations of constitutional rights in U.S. history.

In the Soviet Union, concentration camps were part of the Gulag prison system. Gulags housed people who spoke out against the Communist government. At least 17 million people were sent to Gulags in the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953. Millions of prisoners died in the camps. Communist governments in Vietnam, North Korea, and China have also held thousands of political prisoners in gulags.

The term concentration camp was first used in the late 1800’s. It became more common around 1900 to describe the open-air camps in South Africa where the British kept Boer prisoners of war. The British fought the Boers, South African settlers of mainly Dutch ancestry, during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902.

Throughout history, many countries at war have established concentration camps to imprison members of enemy groups or nations. In the mid-1990’s, for example, during the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina, each of the warring factions—Serbs, Muslims, and Croats—established concentration camps.