concentration camp

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Prison camp for civilians in wartime or under totalitarian rule. Concentration camps called reconcentrados were used by the Spanish in Cuba in 1896, to ‘reconcentrate’ Cubans in urban areas (and in which 200,000 were believed to have died), and by the British during the Second Boer War in South Africa in 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 Adolf Hitler became chancellor in January 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 labour as well as the extermination of up to 4 million people in gas chambers or by other means. In addition to Jews, the victims included socialists, Romanies, homosexuals, and ‘defectives’. At Maidanek, about 1.5 million people were exterminated and cremated; their ashes were used as fertilizer and land infill. 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 in 1961.

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