Wikipedia:
Quote:
The Random House Dictionary defines the term "concentration camp" as: "a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc.", and, the American Heritage Dictionary defines it as: "A camp where civilians, enemy aliens, political prisoners, and sometimes prisoners of war are detained and confined, typically under harsh conditions."
[edit] Earliest usage of concentration camps and origins of the term
Polish historian W---322;adys---322;aw Konopczy---324;ski has suggested the first concentration camps were created in Poland in the 18th century, during the Bar Confederation rebellion, when the Russian Empire established three concentration camps for Polish rebel captives awaiting deportation to Siberia.[5]
The earliest of these camps may have been those set up in the United States for Cherokee and other Native Americans in the 1830s; however, the term originated in the reconcentrados (reconcentration camps) set up by the Spanish military in Cuba during the Ten Years' War (1868---8211;1878) and by the United States during the Philippine---8211;American War (1899---8211;1902).[6]
The English term "concentration camp" grew in prominence during the Second Boer War (1899---8211;1902), when they were operated by the British in South Africa.[6][7]
There were a total of 45 tented camps built for Boer internees and 64 for black Africans. Of the 28,000 Boer men captured as prisoners of war, 25,630 were sent overseas. The vast majority of Boers remaining in the local camps were women and children.
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Note that this meaning of the term does not have much in common with what the efficient German tyranny turned KZs into. In German, they are often referred to as "Todesfabriken" (death factories), meanming both that the prionsers worked and suffered themselves to death, and produced death, with the context of the gas chambers not needing further explanation, I think.
So the traditional meaning of the Anglosaxon term "concentration camp" is somewhat misleading as a dewscription for the German camps.
The German concentration camps were no concentrated prisons, they were nothing like any of the camps listed in that article. They were designed to kill in masses, not to keep people as prisoners.
Let's cut it short. KZs were the closest imitation of hell man has ever created. While wars and revolutions, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung killed in even bigger scores, I think nothing comes close to the qualitative perfidity and cynism of the Nazi death factories.