Definition of Concentration Camp

Sadly linked to history by the use made of this concept, a concentration camp does not It should be more than, theoretically, a place in which you concentrate, for various reasons, people or even things. But the sad reality is that such a term ends up designating internment centers for prisoners, whose living conditions are anything but good.

While the paradigm The maximum of this definition was represented by the camps erected throughout Europe by the Nazis, the term was born during the Anglo-Boer War of 1899/1902 at the hands of the English by virtue of their politics of scorched earth to the Boers, imprisoning in them families who lived on farms scattered throughout the territory and that, in this way, they could provide logistical support to the guerrilla parties of their own.

The bad reputation that the term gained was immediate due to the appalling health conditions of these camps, in which their inmates had to subsist in precarious tents and to the outdoors, in addition to suffering the consequences of an inadequate diet, conditions that, together with the mistreatment dispensed by their jailers, exponentially increased mortality in said enclosures.

I have spoken of Boer civilians, because the truth is that... If something characterizes the concentration camps, it is that they are designed for the internment of civilians, rather than enemy soldiers, although both can live in them.

Although there have been several countries that have used the concentration model in various conflicts, the "apotheosis" in its use - if I allows the use of this term, nothing frivolous in this context - it was in World War II by Nazi Germany and some of its states satellites.

These camps fulfilled the mission of getting rid of political rivals of the regime, people that the National Socialists considered as belonging to "inferior races", and enemies.

Despite the fact that all Nazi camps are generally called "concentration camps," various types are distinguished: transit, concentration, work, and extermination.

The transit camps were those in which the prisoners were concentrated, waiting to be distributed to their destinations. end, a kind of temporary detention camps where the detainees waited to be transported to their destination. assigned.

The concentration camps were comparable to prisons, detention centers, but with a few conditions considerably worse, as brutality by guards and security personnel was the rule, and the punishments and sentences, very severe.

The labor camps were looking for productivity of the Nazi war machine by enslaving people, who were recruited by the force to work, like a forced labor sentence but with increased brutality inflicted.

Finally, the worst class of all was the extermination camp, where inmates went to stop just not to get out of there alive, following the policy of “solution final ”dictated by the leadership of the German National Socialist regime and the acquiescence of its puppet states.

From this time, names such as Auschwitz, Bełżec, Chelmno, Sobibór, Oranienburg, Treblinka or Mauthausen have become infamous for history.

Nazi Germany was not the only one to have concentration camps during the conflagration, thus, and after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a part A substantial number of Californian citizens of Japanese origin (an important community in the Pacific state) were interned in camps such as that of Apple orchard.

Dictatorships such as the Franco regime in Spain (Castuera or Miranda de Ebro) or the Portuguese Estado Novo (Tarrafal) also had their concentration camps, and even France used concentration system and provided the worst reception conditions for Spanish republicans fleeing defeat in 1939, in fields such as Rivesaltes or Argelès-sur-Mer.

But outside the Nazi camps, the best known are undoubtedly the Soviets, who formed the network known as the "Gulag."

The Gulag (masterfully described by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the play Gulag Archipelago) was the system of concentration camps, prisons and forced labor, established in the USSR from the camps of the old tsarist system.

In general, a concentration camp consists of a infrastructure poor housing, poor living conditions, sanitation and feeding, mistreatment by security personnel, and forced labor or summary executions, used as a form of punishment for a group of people considered an enemy, either for political or social reasons, and who operates in a transitory regime outside the reach of the laws.

Photos: Fotolia - inacioluc / andriano_cz / joachimplehn

Issues in Concentration Camp