Search by...
- Keyword
- Title
- Author
- Subject
- Publisher
Results should have...
- All of these words
- Any of these words
- This exact phrase
- None of these words
Keyword searches may also use the operators
AND, OR, NOT, “ ”, ( )
AND, OR, NOT, “ ”, ( )
Concentration Camps
concentration camp
concentration camp, a detention site outside the normal prison system created for military or political purposes to confine, terrorize, and, in some cases, kill civilians. The term was first used to describe prison camps used by the Spanish military during the Cuban insurrection (1868–78), those created by America in the Philippines (1898–1901), and, most widely, to refer to British camps built during the South African War (Boer War) to confine Afrikaners in the Transvaal and Cape Colony (1899—1902). The term soon took on much darker meanings. In the USSR, the Gulag elaborated on the concept beginning as early as 1920. After 1928, millions of opponents of Soviet collectivization as well as common criminals were imprisoned under extremely harsh conditions and many died.
During World War II concentration camps were established throughout Europe by the Nazis, and throughout Indochina and Manchuria by the Japanese. Of the millions of people of many nationalities detained in them, a large proportion died of mistreatment, malnutrition, and disease. In both Nazi and Japanese camps inmates were exploited for slave labor and medical experimentation, but the Nazis also established extermination camps. In the best known of these—Majdanek, Treblinka, and Oświęcim (Auschwitz), in Poland—more than six million mainly Jewish men, women, and children were killed in gas chambers. Among the most notorious Nazi camps liberated by U.S. and British troops in 1945 were Buchenwald, Dachau, and Bergen-Belsen.
The term has also been applied to the U.S. relocation centers for American citizens of Japanese origin and others interned in the W United States during World War II. In China during the Cultural Revolution (1966–69) millions were sent to euphemistically named
"reeducation"
camps, and in Cambodia after Pol Pot came to power (1976) an estimated one million civilians died in
"reeducation"
camps. North Korea maintains a system of political and criminal prison camps in which inmates are sentenced to harsh physical labor and are underfed and mistreated. In 1992, reports of malnutrition and killings in concentration camps for Muslim, Croat, and Serb male civilians in Bosnia led to attempts by international organizations to identify the location of the camps and inspect them.
Selected full-text books and articles on this topic at Questia
Inside the Concentration Camps: Eyewitness Accounts of Life in Hitler's Death Camps
Eugène Aroneanu; Thomas Whissen. Praeger, 1996
Read preview
Eugène Aroneanu; Thomas Whissen. Praeger, 1996
The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp
Wolfgang Sofsky; William Templer. Princeton University Press, 1997
Read preview
Wolfgang Sofsky; William Templer. Princeton University Press, 1997
The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps
Terrence Des Pres. Oxford University Press, 1980
Read preview
Terrence Des Pres. Oxford University Press, 1980
Against All Hope: Resistance in the Nazi Concentration Camps, 1938-1945
Hermann Langbein; Harry Zohn. Paragon House, 1994
Read preview
Hermann Langbein; Harry Zohn. Paragon House, 1994
The Business of Genocide: The SS, Slave Labor, and the Concentration Camps
Michael Thad Allen. University of North Carolina Press, 2002
Read preview
Michael Thad Allen. University of North Carolina Press, 2002
Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi Concentration Camps
Robert H. Abzug. Oxford University Press, 1985
Read preview
Robert H. Abzug. Oxford University Press, 1985
Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land
Sara Nomberg-Przytyk; Eli Pefferkorn; David H. Hirsch; Roslyn Hirsch. University of North Carolina Press, 1985
Read preview
Sara Nomberg-Przytyk; Eli Pefferkorn; David H. Hirsch; Roslyn Hirsch. University of North Carolina Press, 1985
Birkenau: The Camp of Death
Marco Nahon; Jacqueline Havaux Bowers; Steven Bowman. University of Alabama Press, 1989
Read preview
Marco Nahon; Jacqueline Havaux Bowers; Steven Bowman. University of Alabama Press, 1989
Spaniards in the Holocaust: Mauthausen, the Horror on the Danube
David Wingeate Pike. Routledge, 2000
Read preview
David Wingeate Pike. Routledge, 2000
The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies
Guenter Lewy. Oxford University Press, 2000
Read preview
Guenter Lewy. Oxford University Press, 2000
Librarian’s tip: Includes discussion of concentration camps in chapters 9-12
Concentration Camps on the Home Front: Japanese Americans in the House of Jim Crow
John Howard. University of Chicago Press, 2008
Read preview
John Howard. University of Chicago Press, 2008