A penal camp where political prisoners or prisoners of war are confined (usually under harsh conditions); SYN. stockade.
Prison camp for civilians in wartime or under totalitarian rule. The first concentration camps were devised by the British during the Second Boer War in South Africa 1899 for the detention of Afrikaner women and children (with the subsequent deaths of more than 20,000 people). A system of hundreds of concentration camps was developed by the Nazis in Germany and occupied Europe (1933–45) to imprison Jews and political and ideological opponents after Hitler became chancellor Jan 1933. The most infamous camps in World War II were the extermination camps of Auschwitz, Belsen, Dachau, Maidanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka. The total number of people who died at the camps exceeded 6 million, and some inmates were subjected to medical experimentation before being killed.
At Oswiecim (Auschwitz-Birkenau), a vast camp complex was created for imprisonment and slave labor as well as the extermination of over 4 million people in gas chambers or by other means. In addition to Jews, the victims included Gypsies, homosexuals, and other “misfits” or “unwanted” people. At Maidanek, about 1.5 million people were exterminated, cremated, and their ashes used as fertilizer. Many camp officials and others responsible were tried after 1945 for war crimes, and executed or imprisoned. Foremost was Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the extermination system, who was tried and executed by the state of Israel 1961.