Talk: Concentration camp

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Murder/Execution

From Concentration camp: "Although exact numbers will never be known, it is estimated that approximately six million Jews and 600,000 homosexuals were murdered in Nazi concentration camps."

"Murder" implies extrajudicial killing, which is exactly what the Endlosung was not. Suggest changing to "executed" or some term which recognizes this.

The correct term is clearly 'murder'. The reason is the actions would be considered as murder by every fair court of law on the planet.

Ok :-) You the writer. You seem to know what you're doing.

Murder is correct, because even the Nazis haven't changed the law in a way, that would have maken the Endlösung legal.

Concentration/Internment

You really need to clarify your definition. you say 'concentration camp is any blah blah blah of people for political purpose, forced labor, extermination, ' and then you go on to say "interment is used to refer to american camps for japanese" .... so which is it, american japanese camps are concentration camps or not?

You also need to consider the American slavery/plantation system, which was essentially a massive forced labor system, predominately based on ethnicity, that ended after a Civil War.

Churchill in the Boer War

I am suprised to see Churchill cited as a member of the British military during the Boer War. It was always my understanding he was there purely in the capacity of a war correspondent. sjc Later: he left the army in 1899, and became a war correspondent. While reporting the Boer War he was taken prisoner by the Boers but made headline news when he escaped, and, on returning to England, he wrote a book about his experiences. sjc

While some POWs were kept at NAZI camps they were not the reason for the camps. POWs are kept at POW camps. The Germans had POW camps as well as concentration camps. Also were the British Boer War camps POW camps or concentration camps? --rmhermen

In the Boer war, most POW's were shipped off to St Helena or Ceylon. The camps in which the Boer women and children were kept were called "concentration camps" by the British themselves. Down here, Kitchener is reviled to this day for his initiative in setting up these camps. Although not consciously intended as extermination devices, meagre rations and bad hygiene killed of between a quarter and a third of the inmates -- clasqm

Rummel's estimates

See this graphic for Rummel's estimates: NAZIS.TAB1.1.GIF

China

I made a number of changes to the China entry to make it more NPOV. I removed the statement that China currently has hundreds of concentration camps which isn't factual unless you want to define any prison as a concentration camp. Also, the statement that prison goods make up an insignificant part (i.e. less than 1%) of China's exports also needed to be in there. -- Chenyu

United States (WWII)

What about US camps for Americans of Japanese origin during WW2 ? --Taw

It's in there: "The term [Internment Camp]? is often used as an equivalent in other historical contexts, such as the imprisonment by the United States of [Japanese American]? citizens during World War II. However American internment camps did not involve forced labor or extermination, merely confinement."

Canada (WWI)

WRT the claims of Canadian concentration camps during WWI, could somebody provide some evidence please? --Robert Merkel

Japan (WWII)

And could someone write about the internment by the Japanese of American, Canadian and European civilians during World War II? A Japanese woman I met in 1988 showed me a book describing the conditions in the Japaneses-run internment camps, and if I recall correctly they were much worse than Manzanar -- not that this excuses or justifies anything. I would just like to see things put in perspective. Ed Poor

Theresienstadt

AFAIK Theresienstadt was not a concentration camp, but a ghetto, and the Nazis put mainly old people there.

Should we correct this for accuracy's sake or should we leave it as it is a rather pedantic discrimination for most people??

--Korpo

I've seen Theresienstadt defined as a "ghetto" (not sure about correct term, I'm translating directly from spanish here, "gueto de tránsito") by some scholars, like Christopher R. Browning on his book "Ordinary men".

But on the Wiki entry for Theresienstadt, it states that it really was a concentration camp disguised as a normal town, or ghetto. So, I wouldn't change it until we find a normative definition.

--Richy

Theresienstadt was a ghetto and a transit camp (presumably what is meant by "collective point" -- must reword that). There were actually two seperate camps, the small fortress, which was used as a prison camp, and the large fortress which contained the town, and appeared more as a ghetto, though it was mostly a collection point for prisoners who had been transported from other ghettoes in the Reich, before they could be sent to other concentration or extermination camps.

--Paul

Theresienstadt was a garrison town, along with a fort, before the fort became a prison and the town became a ghetto/ concentration camp. Rickyrab 16:06, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Guantanamo Bay

I would greatly appreciate, just by the matter of definition that Guantanamo Bay as a camp were people due to their fighting for what they consider to be freedom are kept under let us say unfortunate circumstances (iron cages, soldiers with german shepherds, interrogations under let us say not really legal circumstances) was mentioned on this page

I don't believe Guantanamo Bay fits the definition even closely -- a concentration camp concentrates a particular group of people in camps. This is measured in thousands, not in dozens or even hundreds, and generally is noted for indiscriminately rounding people up (a la the Japanese internment during WW2), not for arresting suspected criminals. Guantanamo Bay is more along the lines of a POW camp in violation of the Geneva Conventions, which is a separate issue. --Delirium 07:53, Aug 6, 2003 (UTC)

From a dictionary: "concentration camp n. 1. A camp where civilians, enemy aliens, political prisoners, and sometimes prisoners of war are detained and confined, typically under harsh conditions." I don't think the number of inmates matters. --Wik 07:59, Aug 6, 2003 (UTC)

I think that definition is a bit too broad. For example, one often hears of US soldiers held under harsh conditions in North Vietnamese POW camps, but I haven't heard these described as concentration camps. The latter term seems very much limited to situations where you're basically herding a group of people into camps based on some identifying characteristic, whether they've done anything or not. If we do expand the definition to include Guantanamo, we also need to include all the POW camps of WW2, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and so on, none of which I think belong in this article. --Delirium 08:02, Aug 6, 2003 (UTC)

The key word is "soldiers". The Guantamo concentration camp holds civilians. // Liftarn

Rheinwiesenlager

How many people died in the Rheinwiesenlager?

To the person who wrote the comment above: I don't know, but Rummell has some estimates at http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP13.HTM Perhaps you could write an article on the Rheinwiesenlager? (Rhine meadow camps?) -- The Anome 13:25, 6 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Canada (WWI) again

Ukraine was never part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. During WW1 it was part of the Russian Empire until 1917, when it seceded, although its independence was not recognised. You will have to find some other reason why the Canadians put Ukrainians in camps. Adam 15:58, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Maybe whoever wrote that referred to Galicians? It's still a stretch, though, I agree. --Shallot 16:19, 30 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I doubt the Canadians of 1917 knew a Galician from a Cardassian. In any case most Galicians are Poles, not Ukrainians. Adam 00:08, 1 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I owe you a beer if you can prove the latter statement. Halibutt 06:15, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Amnesty International's phrasing

<quote> ... for instance, Amnesty International has criticized the US over allegations of mistreatment, but does not call Guantanamo a concentration camp. </quote> Amnesty is very carefully with its words and on the other site, the word they use can seen as proven facts. They avoid using a hard to define word like Concentration camp and wouldn't have used it for the Camps in Nazi Germany.

As so often, words acquire a meaning over time that conflicts with the original meaning - then that meaning is itself applied retrospectively.

Concentration camps were meant to "concentrate" the civilian population. They were not meant to be used to kill the inmates of the camps, or to punish them (they were not accused of any crime), though conditions in the camps were appalling and thousands died.

The Nazis applied the same term to camps that were in fact prison camps, or slave labor camps - a different thing entirely. The "death camps" are now synonymous with "concentration camps" - so we now have to coin a new phrase "internment camps" to describe what the concentration camps actually were - whilst giving Nazi apologists the chance to claim the British invented concentration camps - which while strictly true is extremely misleading.

Example - detention centres for Asylum seekers are "concentration camps" in the original meaning - but are clearly not "concentration camps" in the Nazi sense.

Exile 15:29, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Gulag

I am not sure that the section about Soviet syslem of camps belong here at all, besides a summary and reference. Gulags *never* were considered as "concentration" camps. Their tradition is in the penal system of the Imperial Russia called katorga. It perfectly fit the idea of the "leading role of the working class", and the Soviet labor camps were claimed to serve the goal of "reeducation by labor", with a special term "reforging"("perekovka" in Russian). That they actually served as death camps by the virtue of extremely hard labor in extremal conditions is another issue, similar to the deadly irony of Nazi's "Arbeit macht frei" of Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz. Mikkalai 17:16, 5 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I am not sure that we should say that "at least 10 million died in the Gulag" without giving a reference. I presume this is an estimate in the Conquest-Pipes tradition. Recent scholarship disputes this. See

J. Arch Getty, Rittersporn, Zemskov, "Victims of the Soviet Penal System In the Pre-War Years, " American Historical Review, Vol. 98, no. 4 (1993), 1017-1050

Perhaps we should state how many deaths are backed by documentary proof, and then go over different people's estimates?

Harald

I didn't write that bit, but the 2004 Encyclopedia Brittannica has an entry for "Gulag" which says, "Western scholarly estimates of the total number of deaths in the Gulag in the period from 1918 to 1956 range from 15 to 30 million." Mackerm 05:29, 28 Jun 2004 (UTC)

You are referring to a tertiary source. We ought to read what "Western scholars" are currently estimating. "At least 10 million" does not match with the figures provided by the main anti-Stalinist Russian human-rights organization, for that matter.

Cyprus?

Should the camps for Jews who fleed Europe but were unable to reach Eretz Israel under the British mandate of Palestine because of the immigration quota and therefore were being "concentrated" in Cyprus be also included here? ---Humus sapiens Talk 00:26, 12 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Concentration camp definition in Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed.

This is the definition from the OED, printed in 1989:

7. attrib.: concentration camp, a camp where non-combatants of a district are accommodated, such as those instituted by Lord Kitchener during the South African war of 1899-1902; one for the internment of political prisoners, foreign nationals, etc., esp. as organized by the Nazi regime in Germany before and during the war of 1939-45

Note that Konzentrationslager (abbreviated KZ) is a literal translation from the English term. Mackerm 15:26, May 12, 2004 (UTC)

http://www.deathcamps.org/websites/jupeng.htm seems up-to-date (List of German KZ camps for future reference). Mackerm 15:43, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This definition was removed form text by kwertii, but the info about Lord Kitchener is nowhere else. Must be restored. Mikkalai 15:52, 13 Oct 2004 (UTC)

UK

'Irish nationals' were not interned in the UK. At least not as described here. There was 'selective internment' in Northern Ireland. This did not lead directly to Home Rule as stated here. It could be considered to have contributed to the imposition of direct rule of NI from London.

Listing Order of the countries...

is there any rhyme or reason in the order in which the countries are listed? why is Cuba first, the Netherlands last? ✈ James C. 21:08, 2004 Aug 8 (UTC)

Looks like it started out in chronological order (cribbed from the Encyclopedia Britannica), and people added more countries where they pleased. Mackerm 21:27, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

okay... seeing that, does anyone have any objections regarding an alphabetization of the country listing? also, feel free to do it yourself if you want. ✈ James C. 07:28, 2004 Aug 25 (UTC)

I think chronological makes the most sense. Mackerm 08:25, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Chronological seems sensible to me too - I'll pause for comments (though it seems unlikely since the last one was in August), and then rearrange the sections by earliest date, unless someone beats me to it. The current order is a mess. Paul 4 October 2004

German concentration camps

I can't find an article on German concentration camps during WWII. There are separate entries for Holocaust, Final solution, different camps listed separately, there is even a list of Camps in Poland during World War II. However, I can't find a list of all German camps during WWII wherever they were. Is there such a list? Halibu tt 23:55, Sep 10, 2004 (UTC)

I found this a while ago: http://www.deathcamps.org/websites/jupeng.htm

Mackerm 00:23, 11 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Ropers' Sept 11 edit

I disagree with the changed definition. I plan to replace it with the Oxford English Dictionary'd def. because it is a touchy subject.

The entries should also be kept in chronological order, rather than alphabetical. That's the way the page was originally, and it gradually got mixed up. Mackerm 05:56, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Israel/ Sabra and Shatila Massacre

Has Israel ever put Palestinians in concentration camps? The Gaza Strip looks suspiciously like a very big concentration camp to me, who's never been there, but reads about it. Rickyrab 05:58, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Did the Sabra and Shatila Massacre involve concentration camps? If so, who the heck ran them? Rickyrab 06:03, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I don't think refugee camps can count as Concentration Camps if the refugees are not imprisoned, and are allowed by whoever runs the camp to leave (to go home, say) - Paul 4 October 2004

Saipan Internment Camp 1944

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