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47-514: Purported to be translations of English-language books by prisoners in concentration camps , these books were highly pornographic accounts of imprisonment, generally of Allied prisoners of war, sexual abuse by female Schutzstaffel guards (or in some cases by Japanese guards), and the prisoners' eventual revenge, which usually consisted of the rape and murder of their tormentors. The books, with titles like I Was Colonel Schultz's Private Bitch , were especially popular among adolescent boys, often

94-595: A group which the government has identified as dangerous or undesirable." Although the first example of civilian internment may date as far back as the 1830s, the English term concentration camp was first used in order to refer to the reconcentration camps (Spanish: reconcentrados ) which were set up by the Spanish military in Cuba during the Ten Years' War (1868–1878). The label

141-522: A pitiable condition and the enemy uses those families to force us to surrender .. and there is little doubt that that was indeed the intention of Kitchener when he had issued instructions that no more families were to be brought into the concentration camps ". Thomas Pakenham writes of Kitchener's policy U-turn, No doubt the continued 'hullabaloo' at the death-rate in these concentration camps, and Milner's belated agreement to take over their administration, helped change Kitchener's mind [some time at

188-608: A report in June 1901 that contradicted Brodrick's claim, and Lloyd George then openly accused the government of "a policy of extermination" directed against the Boer population. The same month Liberal opposition party leader Campbell-Bannerman took up the assault and answered the rhetorical question "When is a war not a war?" with his own rhetorical answer "When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa", referring to those same camps and

235-573: A result, the term "concentration camp" is sometimes conflated with the concept of an " extermination camp " and historians debate whether the term "concentration camp" or the term "internment camp" should be used to describe other examples of civilian internment. Also during World War II, concentration camps were established by Italian , Japanese , US , and Canadian forces. The former label continues to see expanded use for cases post- World War II , for instance in relation to British camps in Kenya during

282-551: A shortage of modern medicine facilities and medical mistreatment, many internees died. Although the 1900 UK general election , also known as the "Khaki election", had resulted in a victory for the Conservative government on the back of recent British victories against the Boers, public support quickly waned as it became apparent that the war would not be easy. Further unease developed following reports filtering back to Britain concerning

329-547: A volunteer doctor in the Langman Field Hospital at Bloemfontein between March and June 1900. In his widely distributed and translated pamphlet 'The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct' he justified both the reasoning behind the war and handling of the conflict itself. He also pointed out that over 14,000 British soldiers had died of disease during the conflict (as opposed to 8,000 killed in combat) and at

376-406: Is that inmates are held outside the rule of law . Extermination camps or death camps, whose primary purpose is killing, are also imprecisely referred to as "concentration camps". The American Heritage Dictionary defines the term concentration camp as: "A camp where persons are confined, usually without hearings and typically under harsh conditions, often as a result of their membership in

423-612: The Cheka . These camps, as Lenin envisioned them, had a distinctly political purpose. These concentration camps were not identical to the Stalinist, but were introduced to isolate war prisoners given the extreme historical situation following World War 1 . In 1929, the distinction between criminal and political prisoners was eliminated, administration of the camps was turned over to the Joint State Political Directorate , and

470-598: The Communist Party of Germany and the Social Democratic Party of Germany , in 1933, detaining tens of thousands of prisoners. Many camps were closed following releases of prisoners at the end of the year, and the camp population would continue to dwindle through 1936; this trend would reverse in 1937, with the Nazi regime arresting tens of thousands of " anti-socials ", a category that included Romani people as well as

517-720: The Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960), and camps set up in Chile during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990). According to the United States Department of Defense as many as 3 million Uyghurs and members of other Muslim minority groups are being held in China 's internment camps which are located in the Xinjiang region and which American news reports often label as concentration camps . The camps were established in

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564-589: The Boer families by themselves in desperate conditions in the countryside. It was according to one historian that "at [the Vereeniging negotiations in May 1902] Boer leader Louis Botha asserted that he had tried to send [Boer] families to the British, but they had refused to receive them" . Quoting a Boer commandant referring to Boer women and children made refugees by Britain's scorched-earth policy as saying, "Our families are in

611-532: The British public. According to historian Thomas Pakenham , in March 1901, Lord Kitchener initiated plans to deter guerrillas. In a series of systematic drives, organised like a sporting shoot, with success defined by a weekly 'bag' of killed, they captured and wounded Boers. They swept the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas including women and children. Large epidemics of diseases including measles, killed thousands, affecting children

658-481: The Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain ordered Alfred Milner to ensure that "all possible steps are being taken to reduce the rate of mortality". The civil authority took over the running of the camps from Kitchener and the British command and by February 1902 the annual death-rate in the concentration camps for white inmates dropped to 6.9 percent and eventually to 2 percent. However, by then

705-489: The Commission's recommendations went even further. The Commission insisted that rations should be increased and that additional nurses be sent out immediately and included a long list of other practical measures designed to improve conditions in the camp. Millicent Fawcett was quite blunt in expressing her opinion that much of the catastrophe was owed to a simple failure to observe elementary rules of hygiene . In November 1901,

752-584: The Orange Free State from January 1901. In May 1901 she returned to England on board the ship, the Saxon . Alfred Milner , High Commissioner in South Africa, also boarded the Saxon for holiday in England but, unfortunately for both the camp internees and the British government, he had no time for Miss Hobhouse, regarding her as a Boer sympathizer and "trouble maker". On her return, Emily Hobhouse did much to publicize

799-730: The Spanish–Cuban Ten Years' War when Spanish forces detained Cuban civilians in camps in order to more easily combat guerrilla forces. Over the following decades the British during the Second Boer War and the Americans during the Philippine–American War also used concentration camps. The term "concentration camp" and "internment camp" are used to refer to a variety of systems that greatly differ in their severity, mortality rate, and architecture; their defining characteristic

846-466: The appearance of the first publication, the publishers were accused by an Israeli court of distributing pornography and the books were discontinued. Although still available underground, certain titles earned the ire of the establishment, and efforts were made to find and destroy them. The advent of the Internet has allowed for peer-to-peer file sharing and thus made censorship attempts far harder. In 2003,

893-676: The camps were greatly expanded to the point that they comprised a significant portion of the Soviet economy. This Gulag system consisted of several hundred camps for most of its existence and detained some 18 million from 1929 until 1953. As part of a series of reforms during the Khrushchev Thaw , the Gulag shrank to a quarter of its former size and receded in its significance in Soviet society. The Nazis first established concentration camps for tens of thousands of political prisoners, primarily members of

940-416: The camps were purely "voluntary" and that the interned Boers were "contented and comfortable", but was somewhat undermined as he had no firm statistics to back up his argument, so when his "voluntary" argument proved untenable, he argued that all measures being taken were "military necessities" and stated that everything possible was being done to ensure satisfactory conditions in the camps. Hobhouse published

987-529: The camps, of whom about a million died during their imprisonment. The total number of casualties in these camps is difficult to determine, but the deliberate policy of extermination through labor in many of the camps was designed to ensure that the inmates would die of starvation, untreated disease and summary executions within set periods of time. In addition to the concentration camps, Nazi Germany established six extermination camps , specifically designed to kill millions of people, primarily by gassing . As

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1034-691: The camps. This was not the first appearance of concentration camps, as the Spanish had used them in Cuba during and after the Ten Years' War. However, the Boer War concentration camp system was the first time a whole nation had been systematically targeted, and the first in which entire regions had been depopulated. Eventually, a total of 45 tented camps were built for Boer internees and 64 additional camps were built for black Africans. The vast majority of Boers who remained in

1081-542: The children of concentration camp survivors. Groups of Israeli publishers began to publish dime novel -format memoirs, describing abuse, particularly sexual abuse, in the concentration camps. Sold in magazine kiosks, the novels, ostensibly first-person memoirs, became best-sellers. According to Israeli filmmaker Ari Libsker , "the Holocaust pictures that I saw, as one who grew up here, were of naked women." They disappeared almost as quickly as they appeared. Within two years of

1128-449: The constant disruption of communication lines by the Boers. The food rations were meager, and there was a two-tier allocation policy, whereby families of men still fighting were routinely given smaller rations than others. The inadequate shelter, poor diet, bad hygiene, and overcrowding led to malnutrition and endemic contagious diseases such as measles , typhoid , and dysentery to which the children were particularly vulnerable. Due to

1175-432: The controversial tactics that contributed to a British victory. As the Boers used a 'guerrilla warfare' strategy, they lived off the land and used their farms as a source of food, thus making their farms a key item in their many successes at the beginning of the war. When Kitchener realized that a traditional warfare style would not work against the Boers, he began initiating plans that would later cause much controversy in

1222-424: The damage had been done. A report after the war concluded that 27,927 Boers (of whom 24,074 [50 percent of the Boer child population] were children under 16) had died in the camps. In all, about one in four (25 percent) of the Boer inmates, mostly children, died. "Improvements [however] were much slower in coming to the black camps". It is thought that about 12 percent of black African inmates died (about 14,154) but

1269-414: The death rate of these camps was 45 per cent, twice that of the British camps. The Russian Empire used forced exile and forced labour as forms of judicial punishment. Katorga , a category of punishment which was reserved for those who were convicted of the most serious crimes, had many of the features which were associated with labor-camp imprisonment. According to historian Anne Applebaum , katorga

1316-680: The deaths of women and children in the camps than of the wounded Dervishes after Omdurman , or of his own soldiers in the typhoid-stricken hospitals of Bloemfontein ." However, to Lord Kitchener and British High Command "the life or death of the 154,000 Boer and African civilians in the camps rated as an abysmally low priority" against military objectives. As the Fawcett Commission was delivering its recommendations, Kitchener wrote to St John Brodrick defending his policy of sweeps, and emphasizing that no new Boer families were being brought in unless they were in danger of facing starvation . This

1363-530: The distress of the camp inmates. She managed to speak to the Liberal Party leader, Henry Campbell-Bannerman , who professed to be suitably outraged but was disinclined to press the matter, as his party was split between the imperialists and the pro-Boer factions. St John Brodrick , the Conservative secretary of state for war, first defended the government's policy by arguing dry, rough, puckering feeling that

1410-433: The end of 1901]. ... By mid-December at any rate, Kitchener was already circulating all column commanders with instructions not to bring in women and children when they cleared the country, but to leave them with the guerrillas. ... Viewed as a gesture to Liberals, on the eve of the new session of Parliament at Westminster, it was a shrewd political move. It also made excellent military sense, as it greatly handicapped

1457-483: The genre re-entered public debate in Israel with the research of popular culture analyst Eli Eshed . As a result of that research, Libsker featured the books in a documentary film , which was titled Stalags . Concentration camp A concentration camp is a form of internment camp for confining political prisoners or politically targeted demographics , such as members of national or minority ethnic groups, on

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1504-607: The grounds of state security, or for exploitation or punishment. Prominent examples of historic concentration camps include the British confinement of non-combatants during the Second Boer War , the mass internment of Japanese-American citizens by the US during the Second World War , the Nazi concentration camps (which later morphed into extermination camps ), and the Soviet labour camps or gulag . The term concentration camp originates from

1551-601: The guerrillas, now that the drives were in full swing. ... It was effective precisely because, contrary to the Liberals' convictions, it was less humane than bringing them into camps, though this was of no great concern to Kitchener. The exact number of incarcerated victims of the concentration camps for Afrikaners is estimated to number around 40,000 by May of 1902, the majority of which were women and children. The total deaths in camps are officially calculated at 27,927 deaths. By May of 1902, when The Treaty of Vereeniging

1598-418: The height of epidemics he was seeing 50–60 British soldiers dying each day in a single ill-equipped and overwhelmed military hospital. It has been argued that "this was not a deliberately genocidal policy; rather it was the result of [a] disastrous lack of foresight and rank incompetence on [the] part of the [British] military". Scottish historian Niall Ferguson has also argued that "Kitchener no more desired

1645-440: The homeless, mentally ill, and social non-conformists. Jews were increasingly targeted beginning in 1938. Following the Nazi invasion of Poland and the beginning of World War II, the camps were massively expanded and became increasingly deadly. At its peak, the Nazi concentration camp system was extensive, with as many as 15,000 camps and at least 715,000 simultaneous internees. About 1.65 million people were registered prisoners in

1692-598: The late 2010s under Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping 's administration . Second Boer War concentration camps During the Second Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), the British operated concentration camps in the South African Republic , Orange Free State , Natal, and the Cape Colony . In February 1900, Herbert Kitchener took command of the British forces and implemented some of

1739-467: The leader of the women's suffrage movement was a Liberal Unionist and thus a government supporter and considered a safe pair of hands. Between August and December 1901, the Fawcett Commission conducted its own tour of the camps in South Africa. While it is probable that the British government expected the Commission to produce a report that could be used to fend off criticism, in the end it confirmed everything that Emily Hobhouse had said. Indeed, if anything

1786-492: The local camps were women and children. Between 18,000 and 26,000 women and children perished in these concentration camps due to diseases. The camps were poorly administered from the outset, and they became increasingly overcrowded when Lord Kitchener's troops implemented the internment strategy on a vast scale. Conditions were terrible for the health of the internees, mainly due to neglect, poor hygiene and bad sanitation. The supply of all items were unreliable, partly because of

1833-479: The most. It was the clearance of civilians and uprooting a nation that came to dominate the last phases of the war. As Boer farms were destroyed by the British under their " Scorched Earth " policy - including the systematic destruction of crops and the slaughtering or removal of livestock, the burning down of homesteads and farms to prevent the Boers from resupplying themselves from a home base, many tens of thousands of men, women, and children were forcibly moved into

1880-471: The policies that created them. The Hobhouse Report caused uproar both domestically and internationally. Although the government had comfortably won the parliamentary debate by a margin of 252 to 149, it was stung by the criticism. Concerned by the escalating public outcry, it called on Kitchener for a detailed report. In response, complete statistical returns from camps were sent out in July 1901. By August 1901, it

1927-404: The precise number of deaths of black Africans in concentration camps is unknown as little attempt was made to keep any records of the 107,000 black Africans who were interned. The main decisions (or their absence) had been left to the soldiers, to whom the life or death of the 154,000 Boer and African civilians in the camps rated as an abysmally low priority. [It was only] ... ten months after

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1974-517: The subject had first been raised in Parliament ;... [and after public outcry and after the Fawcett Commission that remedial action was taken and] ... the terrible mortality figures were at last declining. In the interval, at least twenty thousand whites and twelve thousand coloured people had died in the concentration camps, the majority from epidemics of measles and typhoid that could have been avoided. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had served as

2021-646: The treatment of Boer civilians by the British. Public and political opposition to government policies in South Africa regarding Boer civilians was first expressed in Parliament in February 1901 in the form of an attack on the government by the Liberal Party MP David Lloyd George . Emily Hobhouse , a delegate of the South African Women and Children's Distress Fund, visited some of the camps in

2068-579: Was applied yet again to camps set up by the United States during the Philippine–American War (1899–1902). And expanded usage of the concentration camp label continued, when the British set up camps during the Second Boer War (1899–1902) in South Africa for interning Boers during the same time period. The German Empire also established concentration camps during the Herero and Namaqua genocide (1904–1907);

2115-509: Was clear to government and opposition alike that Miss Hobhouse's worst fears were being confirmed – 93,940 Boers and 24,457 black Africans were reported to be in "camps of refuge" and the crisis was becoming a catastrophe as the death rates appeared very high, especially among the children. The government responded to the growing clamor by appointing a commission. The Fawcett Commission, as it became known was, uniquely for its time, an all-woman affair headed by Millicent Fawcett who despite being

2162-514: Was disingenuous as the countryside had by then been devastated under the "Scorched Earth" policy (the Fawcett Commission in December 1901 in its recommendations commented that: "to turn 100,000 people now being held in the concentration camps out on the field to take care of themselves would be cruelty" ) and now that the New Model counter insurgency tactics were in full swing, it made little sense to leave

2209-562: Was not a common sentence; approximately 6,000 katorga convicts were serving sentences in 1906 and 28,600 in 1916. These camps served as a model for political imprisonment during the Soviet period. In the midst of the Russian Civil War , Lenin and the Bolsheviks established "special" prison camps and "special" gas chambers, separate from its traditional prison system and under the control of

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