This is a list of
InternmentInternment is the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the meaning as: "The action of ‘interning’; confinement within the limits of a country or place"...
and
Concentration camps, organized by country. In general, a camp or group of camps is assigned to the country whose government was responsible for the establishment and/or operation of the camp regardless of the camp's location, but this principle can be, or appear to be, departed from in such cases as where a country's borders or name has changed or it was occupied by a foreign power.
Certain types of camps are
excluded from this list, particularly
refugee campA refugee camp is a temporary camp built to receive refugees. Hundreds of thousands or even millions of people may live in any one single camp...
s set up to house refugees who have fled across the border from another country in fear of persecution, or have been set up by an international
non-governmental organizationNon-governmental organization is a term that has become widely accepted as referring to a legally constituted, non-governmental organization created by natural or legal persons with no participation or representation of any government...
.
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This is a list of
InternmentInternment is the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the meaning as: "The action of ‘interning’; confinement within the limits of a country or place"...
and
Concentration camps, organized by country. In general, a camp or group of camps is assigned to the country whose government was responsible for the establishment and/or operation of the camp regardless of the camp's location, but this principle can be, or appear to be, departed from in such cases as where a country's borders or name has changed or it was occupied by a foreign power.
Certain types of camps are
excluded from this list, particularly
refugee campA refugee camp is a temporary camp built to receive refugees. Hundreds of thousands or even millions of people may live in any one single camp...
s set up to house refugees who have fled across the border from another country in fear of persecution, or have been set up by an international
non-governmental organizationNon-governmental organization is a term that has become widely accepted as referring to a legally constituted, non-governmental organization created by natural or legal persons with no participation or representation of any government...
.
Prisoner-of-war campA prisoner-of-war camp is a site for the containment of combatants captured by their enemy in time of war, and is similar to an internment camp which is used for civilian populations. A prisoner of war is generally a soldier, sailor, or airman who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or...
s are treated under a separate category.
Australia
During
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
, 2,940 German and Austrian, men were interned in ten different camps in Australia. Almost all of the men listed as being Austrians were in fact from the Croatian coastal region of Dalmatia, which was then under Austrian rule. Ironically, most Dalmatians were opposed to being part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In 1915, many of the smaller camps, in Australia, closed with their inmates transferred to larger camps. The largest camp was at
HolsworthyHolsworthy is a suburb in south-western Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Holsworthy is located 31 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Liverpool and partly in the Sutherland Shire.Holsworthy is most notable for...
in
New South WalesNew South Wales is Australia's most populous state, located in the south-east of the country, north of Victoria, south of Queensland and east of South Australia...
. Families of the interned men were placed in a camp near Canberra. During
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, 4,721 Italian migrants were interned in Australia.
Austria-Hungary
During
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
, internment camps were set up, mostly for
SerbsSerbs are a South Slavic people living in the Central Europe and the Balkans , between the Balkan- and Carpathian mountains in the east and the Adriatic sea in the west. They are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and, to a lesser extent, in Croatia...
and other pro-Serbian
YugoslavsYugoslavs Yugoslavs Yugoslavs (Serbo-Croatian, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Slovene, Macedonian: Jugoslaveni/Jugosloveni/Jugoslovani,
[Latin script was used in Serbo-Croat, and Slovene languages. Identical spelling is used in the Serbian and Macedonian Cyrillic script (Serbian variant)...]
. Men, women, children, the elderly, the sick and gays were displaced from their homes and sent to concentration camps throughout the Austria-Hungary Empire, to places such as
DobojDoboj is a city and a municipality in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina, situated in the northern part of the Republika Srpska entity on the river Bosna. Doboj is the largest national railway junction; as such, the seats of the Republika Srpska Railways, and the Railways Corporation of Bosnia and...
(46,000),
AradArad is the capital city of Arad County, in western Romania, in the historical region of Crişana, on the river Mureş.An important industrial center and transportation hub, Arad is also the seat of a Romanian Orthodox bishop and features two universities, a Romanian Orthodox theological seminary, a...
,
GyőrGyőr is the most important city of northwest Hungary, the capital of Győr-Moson-Sopron county, and lies on one of the important roads of Central Europe, halfway between Budapest and Vienna. The city is the sixth largest in Hungary, and one of the seven main regional centres of the...
and
Neusiedl am SeeNeusiedl am See is a town in Burgenland, Austria, and administrative center of the district of Neusiedl am See.Neusiedl am See is located on the northern shore of the Neusiedler See.- See also :* Ostautobahn* Moson County...
.
During the Nazi period, several concentration camps, for example the Mauthausen-Gusen camp, were located in Austria. These camps were overwhelmingly run by Austrians.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
During the
Bosnian WarThe Bosnian War, also known as the War in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was an international armed conflict that took place between March 1992 and November 1995. The war involved several sides...
, concentration camps were set up, mostly for
BosniaksThe Bosniaks or Bosniacs are a South Slavic ethnic group, living mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a smaller autochthonous population also present in the Sandžak, Croatia, and the Republic of Macedonia. Bosniaks are typically characterized by their tie to the Bosnian historical region,...
(aka Bosnian Muslims) and other non-Serbs by the Serb authorities of self-proclaimed
Republika SrpskaRepublika Srpska is one of two main political-territorial divisions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the other being the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina...
as well as Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia which coordinated their war activities against Bosniaks, in the light of
Karađorđevo agreementIn 1991, Croatian president Franjo Tuđman and Serbian president Slobodan Milošević had a series of discussions which became known as the Karađorđevo agreement or Karađorđevo meeting. These discussions commenced as early as March, 1991...
ment to redistribute
Bosnia and HerzegovinaBosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina ( or (Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian Latin: Bosna i Hercegovina; Serbian Cyrillic: Босна и Херцеговина) is a country in Southeast Europe, on the Balkan Peninsula...
between
CroatiaCroatia , officially the Republic of Croatia , is a country in southeast Europe, at the crossroads of the Pannonian Plain, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean Sea. Its capital is Zagreb...
and
SerbiaSerbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a country located in both Central and Southeastern Europe. Its territory covers the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and central part of the Balkans...
.
- Dretelj camp
Dretelj camp was a concentration camp run by the Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia during the Bosnian War.-The camp:The camp was located near Čapljina and Medjugorje in southern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Originally a Yugoslav National Army barracks, the camp was primarily concrete with six...
- Heliodrom camp
Heliodrom camp was a concentration camp operated between September 1992 and April 1994 by the Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia and Croatian Defence Council to detain Bosniaks and other non-Croats during the Bosnian War, it was located in Rodoc, just south of Mostar town, in Mostar...
- Keraterm camp
Keraterm camp was a concentration camp near the town of Prijedor in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War from 1992 to 1995. The camp was founded by the authorities of Republika Srpska and was used to collect and confine civilians of Bosniak and Bosnian Croat nationality...
- Manjača camp
Manjača camp was a concentration camp on mountain Manjača near the city of Banja Luka in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Croatian War and Bosnian War from 1991 to 1995...
- Omarska concentration camp
- Trnopolje camp
Trnopolje camp was a concentration camp established in the village of Trnopolje near the city of Prijedor in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina in the first months of the Bosnian War...
Cambodia
The totalitarian communist
Khmer RougeThe Khmer Rouge was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the totalitarian ruling party in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, led by Pol Pot, Ieng Sary, Son Sen and Khieu Samphan....
regime established concentration camps. Various studies have estimated the death toll most commonly between 1.4 million and 2.2 million, with perhaps half of those deaths being due to executions, and the rest from starvation and disease. This is a massive proportion of the Cambodian population, which was only 6-8 million.
Among the best-documented concentration camps were
The Killing FieldsThe Killing Fields were a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Vietnam War....
and the torture camp Security Prison 21.
German Canadian internment
During the Second World War, 850 German Canadians were accused of being spies for the Nazis, as well as subversives and saboteurs. The internees were given a chance by authorities to defend themselves. According to the transcripts of the appeal tribunals, internees and state officials debated conflicting concepts of citizenship.
Many German Canadians interned in Camp Petawawa were from a nineteenth-century migration in 1876. They arrived in a small area a year after a Polish migration landed in Wilno. Their hamlet, made up of farmers primarily, was called
GermanicusGermanicus Julius Caesar was a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty of the early Roman Empire. He was born in Lugdunum, Gaul . At birth he was named either Nero Claudius Drusus after his father or Tiberius Claudius Nero after his uncle...
and is in the bush less than 10 miles from Eganville,
OntarioOntario is a province located in east-central Canada, the largest by population and second largest, after Quebec, in total area. Ontario is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba to the west and Quebec to the east, and 5 U.S...
. Their farms (homesteads originally) were expropriated by the federal government for no compensation and they were imprisoned behind barbed wire in the AOAT camp. The Foymount Air Force Base near
CormacCormac can be translated into "raven" or "legend" and has become a popular Irish name in recent years and is borne by a number of figures from Irish legend and history. Some of these include:*Cormac mac Airt, semi-historical High King of Ireland ca. 227-266...
and Eganville was built on this expropriated land. Notable was that not one of these homesteaders from 1876 or their grandchildren had ever visited Germany again after 1876, yet they were accused of being German Nazi agents.
756 German sailors, mostly captured in
East AsiaEast Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms. Geographically and geo-politically, it covers about , or about 28 percent of the Asian continent, about 15 percent bigger than the area of Europe, though some categorize Tibet, Xinjiang,...
were sent from
IndiaIndia, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal...
n camps to Canada in June 1941 (Camp 33).
Japanese internment and relocation centres
During
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
,
CanadaCanada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
interned residents of Japanese and Italian ancestry. The Canadian government also interned citizens it deemed dangerous to national security. This included both fascists (including Canadians such as
Adrien ArcandAdrien Arcand was a Montreal journalist who led a series of fascist political movements between 1929 until his death in 1967...
who had negotiated with Hitler to obtain positions in the government of Canada once Canada was conquered),
MontrealMontreal is the second-largest city in Canada and the largest city in the province of Quebec. Originally called Ville-Marie , the city takes its present name from Mont-Royal, the triple-peaked hill located in the heart of the city, whose name was also initially given to the island on which the...
mayor Camilien Houde (for denouncing
conscriptionConscription is a general term for involuntary labor demanded by an established authority. It is most often used in the specific sense of requiring citizens to serve in the armed forces...
) and
unionA trade union is an organization of workers who have banded together to achieve common goals in key areas, such as working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labor contracts with employers...
organizers and other people deemed to be dangerous Communists. Such internment was made legal by the
Defence of Canada RegulationsThe Defence of Canada Regulations were a set of emergency measures implemented under the War Measures Act a week before Canada's entry into World War II in the fall of 1939....
, Section 21 of which read:
- The Minister of Justice, if satisfied that, with a view to preventing any particular person from acting in a manner prejudicial to the public safety or the safety of the State, it is necessary to do so, may, notwithstanding anything in these regulations, make an order [...] directing that he be detained by virtue of an order made under this paragraph, be deemed to be in legal custody.
Over 75% were Canadian citizens and they were vital in key areas of the economy, notable the fishery and also in logging and berry farming. Exile took two forms: relocation centres for families and relatively well-off individuals who were a low security threat, and interment camps (often called concentration camps in contemporary accounts, but controversially so) which were for single men, the less well-off, and those deemed to be a security risk. After the war, many did not return to the Coast because of bitter feelings as to their treatment, and fears of further hostility from non-Japanese citizens; of those that returned only a few regained confiscated property and businesses. Most remained in other parts of Canada, notably certain parts of the BC Interior and in the neighbouring province of Alberta.
Camps and relocation centres in the Kootenay region
GreenwoodGreenwood is a small city in south central British Columbia.It was incorporated in 1897 and was formerly one of the principal cities of the Boundary Country smelting and mining district. It earned "city" status and has retained that stature despite the population implosion following the closure of...
,
KasloKaslo is a village in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia, Canada, located on the west shore of Kootenay Lake. Known for its great natural beauty, it is a member municipality of the Central Kootenay Regional District...
, Lemon Creek,
New DenverNew Denver is a small town in southeastern British Columbia, Canada, along the shore of Slocan Lake. New Denver was founded as a mining town in 1892, and briefly known as Eldorado City before being renamed after Denver, Colorado...
,
RoseberyRosebery is an unincorporated community on the east side of Slocan Lake in the Slocan Valley of the West Kootenay region of southeastern British Columbia, Canada, located north of the Village of New Denver...
,
SalmoSalmo is a village in the West Kootenay region of southeastern British Columbia, Canada. It is located in the Salmo River Valley, surrounded by the Selkirk Mountain range....
,
SandonSandon is one of many mining ghost towns in British Columbia, Canada. It is also the birthplace of hockey legend Cecil "Tiny" Thompson.Sandon is located in the Selkirk Mountains, about ten kilometers east of the town of New Denver...
, Slocan City, and Tashme. Some were nearly-empty ghost towns when the internment began, others, like Kaslo and Greenwood, while less populous than in their boom years, were substantial communities.
Camps and relocation centres elsewhere in BC
Bridge River, Minto City,
McGillivray FallsMcGillivray, formerly McGillivray Falls, is an unincorporated recreational community on the west shore of Anderson Lake, just east of midway between the towns of Pemberton and Lillooet, British Columbia, Canada, in that province's southwest Interior....
,
East LillooetLillooet is a small community on the Fraser River in western Canada, about 240 kilometres up the British Columbia Railway line from Vancouver...
, Taylor Lake. Other than Taylor Lake, these were all called "Self-supporting centres", not internment camps. The first three listed were all in a mountainous area so physically isolated that fences and guards were not required as the only egress from that region was by rail or water only. McGillivray Falls and Tashme, on the
Crowsnest HighwayThe Crowsnest Highway, also known as the Interprovincial or, in British Columbia, the Southern Trans-Provincial, is a 1,163 km long principal highway through the southern parts of British Columbia and Alberta, providing the shortest land connection between Vancouver and Medicine Hat...
east of
Hope, British ColumbiaHope is a district municipality located at the confluence of the Fraser and Coquihalla Rivers in the province of British Columbia, Canada. Hope is at the eastern end of both the Fraser Valley and the Lower Mainland region, and is at the southern end of the Fraser Canyon...
, were just over the minimum 100 miles from the Coast required by the deportation order, though Tashme had direct road access over that distance, unlike McGillivray. Because of the isolation of the country immediately coast-wards from McGillivray, men from that camp were hired to work at a sawmill in what has since been named
DevineDevine is a rural locality located in the Gates Valley of the Lillooet Country in the southwestern Interior of British Columbia, Canada, about 3 km from D'Arcy, at the head of Anderson Lake....
, after the mill's owner, which is within the 100-mile quarantine zone. Many of those in the East Lillooet camp were hired to work in town, or on farms nearby, particularly at
FountainFountain is an unincorporated rural area and Indian Reserve in the Fraser Canyon region of British Columbia, Canada, located at the ten-mile mark from the town of Lillooet on BC Highway 99, which in that area is also on the route of the Old Cariboo Road and is located at the junction of that route...
, while those at Minto and Minto Mine and those at Bridge River worked for the railway or the hydro company.
Camps and relocation centres elsewhere in Canada
There were internment camps near
Kananaskis, AlbertaKananaskis is an improvement district situated to the west of Calgary, Alberta, Canada in the foothills and front ranges of the Canadian Rockies....
;
Petawawa, OntarioPetawawa is a town located in eastern portion of Southern Ontario. Situated in the Ottawa Valley, with a population of 14,651 . Petawawa is the most populous municipality in Renfrew County.-Geography:...
;
Hull, QuebecHull is the central and oldest part of the city of Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. It is located on the west bank of the Gatineau River and the north shore of the Ottawa River, directly opposite Ottawa...
;
Minto, New BrunswickMinto is a Canadian village straddling the border of Sunbury County and Queens County, New Brunswick.Minto is located on the north shore of Grand Lake, approximately 50 kilometres northeast of Fredericton...
; and
Amherst, Nova ScotiaAmherst is a Canadian town in northwestern Cumberland County, Nova Scotia.Located at the northeast end of the Cumberland Basin, an arm of the Bay of Fundy, Amherst is strategically situated on the eastern boundary of the Tantramar Marshes 3 kilometres east of the interprovincial border with New...
.
Further information
Ukrainian Canadian internment
In
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
, 8,579 male "aliens of enemy nationality" were interned, including 5,954 Austro-Hungarians, most of whom were probably ethnic
UkrainiansUkrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group primarily living in Ukraine, or more broadly—citizens of Ukraine...
. Many of these internees were used for forced labour in internment camps. See
Ukrainian Canadian internmentThe Ukrainian Canadian internment was part of the confinement of "enemy aliens" in Canada during and for two years after the end of the First World War, lasting from 1914 to 1920. About 5,000 Ukrainian men of Austro-Hungarian citizenship were kept in twenty-four internment camps and related work...
,
Castle Mountain Internment CampEstablished July 13, 1915, the Castle Mountain Internment Camp was by far the largest internment facility in the Canadian Rockies, housing several hundred prisoners at any one time...
, and
Eaton Internment CampAlthough short-lived, the Eaton Internment Camp was one of twenty-six official internment facilities created in Canada to accommodate prisoners of war during the period 1914-20...
.
Further Information
Croatia
- Ustaše
The Ustaša - Croatian Revolutionary Movement , members known collectively as Ustaše, but sometimes anglicised as Ustashe, Ustashas or Ustashi) was a Croatian anti-Yugoslav separatist movement. The ideology of the movement was blend of fascism, nazism, Croatian ultranationalism, and Roman Catholic...
established concentration and labor camps.
Name of the camp |
Date of establishment |
Date of liberation |
Estimated number of prisoners | Estimated number of deaths |
|---|
Jasenovac Jasenovac concentration camp was the largest extermination camp in the Independent State of Croatia during World War II. The camp was established by the Ustaše regime in August 1941 and dismantled in April 1945...
|
August 23, 1941 |
April 22, 1945 |
59,188-700,000 |
Stara Gradiška Stara Gradiška was a concentration and extermination camp in Croatia during World War II specially constructed for the women and children of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and anti-fascist Croats...
|
1941 | 1945 |
|
|
Pag Pag may refer to:* Periaqueductal gray* Pag * Pag * ISO 639-2 and ISO 639-3 code for the Pangasinan languageSee also* PAG...
| 1941 |
None |
|
8,500 |
Cuba
Military Units to Aid ProductionMilitary Units to Aid Production or UMAP’s were established by the Cuban government in 1965 as a way to eliminate alleged "bourgeois" and "counter-revolutionary" values in the Cuban population....
were forced labor concentration camps established by
Fidel CastroFidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban politician, one of the primary leaders of the Cuban Revolution, the Prime Minister of Cuba from February 1959 to December 1976, and then the President of the Council of State of Cuba until his resignation from the office in February 2008...
's communist dictatorship.
They were a way to eliminate alleged "bourgeois" and "counter-revolutionary" values in the Cuban population. First, people were thrown into overcrowded cells at police stations and later taken to secret police facilities, movie houses, stadiums, warehouses, and similar locations. They were photographed, fingerprinted and forced to sign a confession declaring themselves the "scum of society" in exchange for their temporary release until they were summoned to the concentration camps. Those who refused to sign were physically and psychologically tortured.
Beginning in November 1965, already classified people started to arrive by train, bus, truck and other police and military vehicles.
"Social deviants" such as homosexuals, vagrants,
Jehovah's WitnessesJehovah's Witnesses is a restorationist, millenarian Christian denomination. The religion reports worldwide membership of over 7 million adherents involved in evangelism; they report convention attendance of over 12 million, and annual Memorial attendance of over 17 million...
and other religious missionaries were imprisoned in these concentration camps, where they would be "
reeducatedReeducation may refer to:* Brainwashing, efforts aimed at instilling certain beliefs in people against their will* Reeducation through labor, also called laojiao, a form of penal detention in China; or the Soviet gulags for "re-education of class enemies" and reintegrating them through labor into...
".
Finnish Civil War
In the
Finnish Civil WarThe Finnish Civil War was a part of the national and social turmoil caused by World War I in Europe. The war was fought in Finland from 27 January to 15 May 1918, between the forces of the Social Democrats led by the People's Deputation of Finland, commonly called the "Reds" , and the forces of...
, the victorious White Army and German troops captured about 80,000 Red prisoners by the end of the war on 5 May 1918. Once the White terror subsided, a few thousand including mainly small children and women, were set free, leaving 74,000–76,000 prisoners. The largest prison camps were
SuomenlinnaSuomenlinna, until 1918 Viapori , or Sveaborg , is an inhabited sea fortress built on six islands , and which is nowadays part of Helsinki, the capital of Finland.Suomenlinna is a UNESCO World Heritage site and popular with both tourists and locals, who enjoy it as...
, an island facing Helsinki,
HämeenlinnaHämeenlinna is a city and municipality of about inhabitants in the heart of the historical province of Häme in the south of Finland and is the birthplace of composer Jean Sibelius. Today, it belongs to the region of Tavastia Proper, and is the residence city for the Governor of the province of...
,
LahtiLahti is a city and municipality in Finland.It is the capital of the Päijänne Tavastia region located in the province of Southern Finland. It is situated on a bay at the southern end of lake Vesijärvi about north-east of the capital Helsinki...
,
ViipuriVyborg is a town in Leningrad Oblast, Russia, situated on the Karelian Isthmus near the head of the Bay of Vyborg, 130 km to the northwest of St. Petersburg, 38 km south from Russia's border with Finland, where the Saimaa Canal enters the Gulf of Finland...
,
EkenäsEkenäs is a town and former municipality of Finland comprising the former municipalities Snappertuna and Tenala together with the town of Ekenäs. It was merged with Pohja and Karis to form the new municipality of Raseborg on January 1, 2009....
,
RiihimäkiRiihimäki is a town and municipality in the south of Finland, about north of Helsinki and southeast of Tampere. It is somewhat of a railway junction, since the railway tracks going from different parts of the nation to Helsinki merge there. Sako, Ltd...
and
TampereTampere is a city in southern Finland located between two lakes, Näsijärvi and Pyhäjärvi. Since the two lakes differ in level by , the rapids linking them, Tammerkoski, have been an important power source throughout history, most recently for generating electricity...
. The Senate made the decision to keep these prisoners detained until each person's guilt could be examined. A law for a Tribunal of Treason was enacted on 29 May after a long dispute between the White army and the Senate of the proper trial method to adopt. The start of the heavy and slow process of trials was delayed further until 18 June 1918. The Tribunal did not meet all the standards of neutral justice, due to the mental atmosphere of White Finland after the war. Approximately 70,000 Reds were convicted, mainly for complicity to treason. Most of the sentences were lenient, however, and many got out on parole. Still 555 persons were sentenced to death, but only 113 were executed. The trials revealed also that some innocent persons had been imprisoned.
Combined with the severe food shortage, the mass imprisonment led to high mortality rates in the camps, and the catastrophe was compounded by a mentality of punishment, anger and indifference on the part of the victors. Many prisoners felt that they were abandoned also by their own leaders, who had fled to Russia. The condition of the prisoners had weakened rapidly during May, after food supplies had been disrupted during the Red Guards' retreat in April, and a high number of prisoners had been captured already during the first half of April in Tampere and Helsinki. As a consequence, 2,900 starved to death or died in June as a result of diseases caused by malnutrition and
Spanish fluThe 1918 flu pandemic was an influenza pandemic that spread to nearly every part of the world. It was caused by an unusually virulent and deadly influenza A virus strain of subtype H1N1. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin of the virus...
, 5,000 in July, 2,200 in August, and 1,000 in September. The mortality rate was highest in the
EkenäsEkenäs is a town and former municipality of Finland comprising the former municipalities Snappertuna and Tenala together with the town of Ekenäs. It was merged with Pohja and Karis to form the new municipality of Raseborg on January 1, 2009....
camp at 34%, while in the others the rate varied between 5% and 20%. In total, between 11,000 and 13,500 Finns perished. The dead were buried in mass graves near the camps. The majority of the prisoners were paroled or pardoned by the end of 1918 after the victory of the Western powers in
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
also caused a major change in the Finnish domestic political situation. There were 6,100 Red prisoners left at the end of the year, 100 in 1921 (at the same time civil rights were given back to 40,000 prisoners) and in 1927 the last 50 prisoners were pardoned by the social democratic government led by
Väinö TannerVäinö Tanner was a pioneer and leader in the cooperative movement in Finland, and Prime Minister of Finland from 1926 to 1927 ....
. In 1973, the Finnish government paid reparations to 11,600 persons imprisoned in the camps after the civil war.
Continuation War
When the Finnish Army during the
Continuation WarThe Continuation War The Continuation War The Continuation War was the second of two wars fought between Finland and the Soviet Union during World War II....
occupied
East KareliaEast Karelia, in Finnish Itä-Karjala, also Eastern Karelia or Russian Karelia, is a name for the part of Karelia that since the Treaty of Stolbova in 1617 has remained Christian Orthodox under Russian supremacy. It is separated from the western part of Karelia, called Finnish Karelia or...
1941–1944 that was inhabited by ethnically related
Finnic KareliansThe Karelians are a Baltic-Finnic ethnic group living mostly in the Republic of Karelia and in other north-western parts of the Russian Federation. The historic homeland of Karelians includes also parts of present-day Eastern Finland and the formerly Finnish territory of Ladoga Karelia...
(although it never had been a part of Finland — or before 1809 of
Sweden-FinlandSweden–Finland is a controversial historiographical term referring to the Swedish Kingdom from the Kalmar Union to the Napoleonic wars, or the period from the 14th to the 18th century. In 1809 the realm was split and the eastern half came to constitute the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland, in...
), several concentration camps were set up for ethnically
RussianThe Russian people are an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
civilians. The first camp was set up on October 24, 1941, in
PetrozavodskPetrozavodsk is the capital of the Republic of Karelia, Russia, with a population of 266,160 . It stretches along the western shore of the Lake Onega for some 27 kilometers. The city is served by Besovets Airport...
. The two largest groups were 6,000 Russian refugees and 3,000 inhabitants from the southern bank of River Svir forcibly evacuated because of the closeness of the front line. Around 4,000 of the prisoners perished due to malnourishment, 90% of them during the spring and summer 1942. The ultimate goal was to move the Russian speaking population to German-occupied Russia in exchange for any Finnish population from these areas, and also help to watch civilians.
Population in the Finnish camps:
- 13,400 — December 31, 1941
- 21,984 — July 1, 1942
- 15,241 — January 1, 1943
- 14,917 — January 1, 1944
Algeria
During France's
occupation of AlgeriaFrench rule of Algeria lasted from 1830 to 1962, under a variety of governmental systems. One of France's longest-held overseas territories, Algeria became a destination for hundreds of thousands of European immigrants, known as colons and later, as pieds-noirs...
, large numbers of Algerians were forced into "tent cities" and concentration camps both during the initial French invasion in 1830s, and particularly during the
Algerian War of IndependenceThe Algerian War, also known as the Algerian War of Independence or in , was a conflict between France and Algerian independence movements from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria gaining its independence from France...
.
During the early part of the colonial period, camps were used mostly to forcibly remove Arabs, Berbers and Turks from fertile areas of land and replace them by primarily French, Spanish, and Maltese settlers. It has been estimated that from 1830 to 1900, between 15 and 25% of the Algerian population died in such camps and the war in general killed a third of Algeria's population.
During the
Algerian War of IndependenceThe Algerian War, also known as the Algerian War of Independence or in , was a conflict between France and Algerian independence movements from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria gaining its independence from France...
the populations of whole villages which were suspected to have supported the rebel
National Liberation FrontThe National Liberation Front is a socialist political party in Algeria. It was set up on November 1, 1954 as a merger of other smaller groups, to obtain independence for Algeria from France....
(FLN) were incarcerated in such camps.
Spanish Republicans
After the end of
Spanish Civil WarThe Spanish Civil War was a major conflict that devastated Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939. It began after an attempted coup d'état by a group of Spanish Army generals against the government of the Second Spanish Republic, then under the leadership of president Manuel Azaña...
, there were harsh reprisals against Franco's former enemies. Hundreds of thousands of Republicans fled abroad, especially to France and
MexicoThe United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
. On the other side of the
PyreneesThe Pyrenees are a range of mountains in southwest Europe that form a natural border between France and Spain...
,
refugeeUnder the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality,...
s were confined in
internment campsThere have been internment camps and concentration camps in France before, during and after World War II. Beside the camps created during World War I to intern German, Austrian and Ottoman civilian prisoners, the Third Republic opened various internment camps for the Spanish refugees fleeing the...
of the
French Third RepublicThe French Third Republic was the republican government of France between the end of the Second French Empire in 1870 and the Vichy Regime after the invasion of France by the German...
, such as
Camp de RivesaltesThe Camp de Rivesaltes is a military camp in France located on the territory of the commune of Rivesaltes in Pyrénées-Orientales in the South of France. The camp was also used for interning several civil populations from 1939 to 2007...
,
Camp GursCamp Gurs was an internment and refugee camp constructed by the French government in 1939. The camp was originally set up in southwestern France after the fall of Catalonia at the end of the Spanish Civil War to control those who fled Spain out of fear of retaliation from Francisco Franco's regime...
or
Camp VernetLe Vernet Internment Camp, or Camp Vernet, was a concentration camp in Le Vernet, Ariège, near Pamiers, in the French Pyrenees. It was originally built in June 1918 to house French colonial troops serving in World War I but when hostilities ceased it was used to hold German and Austrian prisoners...
, where 12,000 Republicans were housed in squalid conditions (mostly soldiers from the Durruti Division ). The 17,000 refugees housed in Gurs were divided into four categories (Brigadists, pilots,
GudariEuzko Gudarostea was the name of the army commanded by the Basque Government during the Spanish civil war. It was formed by Basque nationalists, Socialists and communists under the direction of lendakari José Antonio Aguirre and coordinating with the army of the Second Spanish Republic...
s
and ordinary Spaniards). The Gudaris (Basques) and the pilots easily found local backers and jobs, and were allowed to quit the camp, but the farmers and ordinary people, who could not find relations in France, were encouraged by the Third Republic, in agreement with the Francoist government, to return to Spain. The great majority did so and were turned over to the Francoist authorities in
IrúnIrun is a town of the Bidasoa-Txingudi region in the province of Guipuscoa in the Basque Autonomous Community, Spain...
. From there they were transferred to the
Miranda de EbroMiranda de Ebro is a city on the Ebro river in the province of Burgos in the autonomous community of Castile and León, Spain. It is located in the north-eastern part of the province, on the border with the province of Álava and the autonomous community of La Rioja...
camp for "purification".
After the proclamation by Marshal
Philippe PétainHenri Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain , generally known as Philippe Pétain or Marshal Pétain , was a French general who reached the distinction of Marshal of France, and was later Chief of State of Vichy France , from 1940 to 1944...
of the Vichy regime, the refugees became political prisoners, and the French police attempted to round-up those who had been liberated from the camp. Along with other "undesirables", they were sent to the
Drancy internment campThe Drancy deportation camp of Paris, France was used to hold Jews who were later deported to the extermination camps. 65,000 Jews were deported from Drancy, of whom 63,000 were murdered including 6,000 children...
before being deported to
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
. About 5,000 Spaniards thus died in Mauthausen concentration camp
Vichy France
During
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, The French
VichyVichy France, or the Vichy regime are the common terms used to describe the government of France from July 1940 to August 1944. This government, which succeeded the Third Republic, officially called itself the French State , in contrast with the previous designation, "French Republic." Marshal...
government ran what were called "detention camps" such as the one at Drancy. Camps also existed in the
PyreneesThe Pyrenees are a range of mountains in southwest Europe that form a natural border between France and Spain...
, on the border with pro-Nazi Spain, among them
Camp de RivesaltesThe Camp de Rivesaltes is a military camp in France located on the territory of the commune of Rivesaltes in Pyrénées-Orientales in the South of France. The camp was also used for interning several civil populations from 1939 to 2007...
,
Camp GursCamp Gurs was an internment and refugee camp constructed by the French government in 1939. The camp was originally set up in southwestern France after the fall of Catalonia at the end of the Spanish Civil War to control those who fled Spain out of fear of retaliation from Francisco Franco's regime...
and
Camp VernetLe Vernet Internment Camp, or Camp Vernet, was a concentration camp in Le Vernet, Ariège, near Pamiers, in the French Pyrenees. It was originally built in June 1918 to house French colonial troops serving in World War I but when hostilities ceased it was used to hold German and Austrian prisoners...
. About 73,000 Jews were deported to
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
. In addition, areas which were annexed by Germany formally from France such as
Alsace-LorraineAlsace-Lorraine was a territorial entity created by the German Empire in 1871 after the annexation of most of Alsace and the Moselle region of Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War. The Alsatian part lay in the Rhine Valley on the west bank of the Rhine River and on the east of the Vosges Mountains...
had concentration camps set up, the largest being
Natzweiler-StruthofNatzweiler-Struthof was a German concentration and extermination camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the Alsatian village of Natzwiller in France, and the town of Schirmeck, about 50 km south west from the city of Strasbourg....
.
The Vichy French also ran camps in North and West Africa, and possibly East Africa. Following are the locations of concentration camps, POW camps, and internment camps in (Vichy)West and (Vichy) North Africa, there may have been one in the Mogadishu area of East Africa, and also in Madagascar.
The camps were located at:
West Africa:
- Conakry
- Timbuctoo
- Kankan
- Koulikorro
- Dakar
North Africa:
- Sfax
- El Kef
- Laghouat
- Geryville.
Also camps connected to the Laconia incident:
- Mediouna (near Casablanca)
- Qued-Zen (near Casablanca)
- Sidi-el-Avachi (near Azemmour)
Plus the following camps which are under investigation:
- Taza
- Fes
- Oujda
- Sidi-bel-Abbes
- Berguent
- Settat
- Sidi-el-Ayachi
- Qued Zem
- Mecheria
The camps at Conakry, Timbuctoo, and Kankan had no running water, no electricity, no gas, no electric light no sewers no toilets, and no baths.
The prisoners (mainly British and Norwegian) were housed in native accommodation - mud huts and houses, and a tractor shed. The Vichy French authorities in West Africa called the camps at Conakry, Timbuctoo, and Kankan, concentration camps.
Germany
- See also: List of concentration camps of Nazi Germany, Holocaust, Ilag
Ilag is an abbreviation of the German word Internierungslager. They were Internment camps established by the German Army in World War II to hold Allied civilians, caught in areas that were occupied by the German Army...
, ArbeitslagerArbeitslager is a German language word which means Labor camp.During World War II the Nazis operated several categories of Arbeitslager for different categories of inmates...
Before
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
, German South-West Africa (now
NamibiaNamibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in Southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana and Zimbabwe to the east, and South Africa to the south and east...
) was the site of several horrendous camps and extermination programs, such as that at
Shark IslandShark Island is a small island off the coastal city of Lüderitz in Namibia. Now a campsite for tourists, it contained from 1904 to 1907 a concentration camp for members of the Herero and Nama tribes....
. Between 1904 and 1908, following the German suppression of the
HereroThe Herero are a people belonging to the Bantu group, with about 240,000 members alive today. The majority live in Namibia, with the remainder living in Botswana and Angola. Most are employed as workers on large farms or earn their living as merchants or tradesmen in the cities...
and
NamaNama may mean:* NAMA_ or National_Asset_Management_Agency, Ireland's National Asset Management Agency* Nama , a genus of plants in the family Hydrophyllaceae* Holy Name in Indian religions...
in the
Herero and Namaqua genocideThe Herero and Namaqua Genocide occurred in German South-West Africa from 1904 until 1907, during the scramble for Africa. It is thought to be the first genocide of the 20th century. On January 12 1904, the Herero people under Samuel Maharero rose in rebellion against German colonial rule...
, survivors were interned in concentration camps.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/61/201.html
In
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
male civilian citizens of the
AlliesIn general, allies are people, groups, or nations that have joined together in an association for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose. In English usage, those who share a common goal and whose work toward that goal is complementary may be viewed as allies for various purposes even when...
caught by the outbreak of war on the territory of the Germany were interned. One of the camps was at
RuhlebenRuhleben P.O.W. Camp was a civilian detention camp during World War I. It was located in Ruhleben, then a village 10 km to the west of Berlin, now split between the districts of Spandau and Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf...
on a horse race-track near Berlin.
On January 30 1933
Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , popularly known as the Nazi Party...
was appointed Chancellor of the weak coalition government. Although the Nazi party (NSDAP
) was in a minority, Hitler and his associates quickly took control of the country. Within days the first Concentration camp (Konzentrationslager), at
DachauDachau concentration camp was the first Nazi concentration camp opened in Germany, located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km northwest of Munich in the state of Bavaria which is located in southern Germany.Opened in March 1933, it...
,
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
, was built to hold persons considered dangerous by the Nazi administration - these included suspected communists, labor union activists, liberal politicians and even pastors. This camp became the model for all later Nazi concentration camps. It was quickly followed by
Oranienburg-SachsenhausenSachsenhausen or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used primarily for political prisoners from 1936 to the end of the Third Reich in May, 1945. After World War II, when Oranienburg was in the Soviet Occupation Zone, the structure was used as an NKVD...
which became a facility for the training of
SS-Death's HeadSS-Totenkopfverbände was the SS organization responsible for administering the Nazi concentration camps for the Third Reich.The SS-TV was an independent unit within the SS with its own ranks and command structure. It ran the camps throughout Germany, such as Dachau, and in Nazi-occupied Europe,...
officers in the operation of concentration camps.
Theodor EickeTheodor Eicke was a Nazi official, SS-Obergruppenführer, commander of the SS-Division Totenkopf of the Waffen-SS and one of the key figures in the establishment of concentration camps in Nazi Germany. His Nazi Party number was 114901 and his SS number was 2921...
, commandant of Dachau camp, was appointed "Inspector of Concentration Camps" by Himmler on 4 July 1934. By 1934 there were eight major institutions. This started the second phase of development. All smaller detention camps were consolidated into six major camps - Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald,
FlossenburgFlossenbürg was a Nazi concentration camp built in May 1938 by the Schutzstaffel Economic-Administrative Main Office at Flossenbürg, in the Oberpfalz region of Bavaria, Germany, near the pre-war border with Czechoslovakia. Between 1938, when the camp was established, and liberation in April 1945,...
, and after the annexation of
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
in 1938 -
MauthausenMauthausen is a small market town in Upper Austria, Austria. It is located at about 20 kilometers east of the city of Linz, and has a population of 4,850 .During World War II, it became the site of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp complex....
, finally in 1939 Ravensbrück (for women). The pajama type blue-striped uniforms were introduced for inmates as well as the practice of tattooing the prisoner's number on his fore-arm. Eicke started the practice of farming out prisoners as slave-labor in German industry, with sub-camps or Arbeitskommandos to house them. The use of common criminals as
KapoKapo was a prisoner who worked inside German Nazi concentration camps during World War II in some lower administrative position ....
, to brutalize and assist in the handling of prisoners, was instituted at this time. In November 1938 the massive arrests of German Jews started, with most of them being immediately sent to the concentration camps, where they were separated from other prisoners and subjected to even harsher treatment. Probably it was at this time that German people started referring (in hushed voices) to the camps as
Kah-Tzets (the initials
KZ in the
German languageGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
.)
The third phase started after the occupation of Poland in 1939. In the first few months Polish intellectuals were detained, including nearly the entire staff of Cracow university arrested in November 1939.
Auschwitz-IAuschwitz-Birkenau was the largest of Nazi Germany's concentration camps and extermination camps, operational during World War II.The camp took its German name from the hosting town of Oświęcim. Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Oświęcim was annexed by Nazi Germany and...
and
Stutthof concentration campStutthof was the first concentration camp built by the Nazi Germany regime outside of Germany.Completed on September 2, 1939, it was located in a secluded, wet, and wooded area west of the small town of Sztutowo . The town is located in the former territory of the Free City of Danzig, 34 km east of...
were built to house them and other political prisoners. Large numbers were executed or died from the brutal treatment and disease. After the occupation of Belgium, France and Netherlands in 1940,
Natzweiler-StruthofNatzweiler-Struthof was a German concentration and extermination camp located in the Vosges Mountains close to the Alsatian village of Natzwiller in France, and the town of Schirmeck, about 50 km south west from the city of Strasbourg....
, Gross Rosen and
Fort BreendonkFort Breendonk is a fortification built in 1906 as part of the second ring of defenses around the city of Antwerp . Originally one in a chain of fortresses constructed to defend Belgium against a German attack, Breendonk was near the town of the same name, about 12 miles southwest of Antwerp...
, in addition to a number of smaller camps, were set up to house intellectuals and political prisoners from those countries that had not already been executed. It must be noted that many of these intellectuals were held first in
GestapoThe was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning in April 1934, it was under the overall administration of the Schutzstaffel under Heinrich Himmler in his position as leader of the SS and Chief of German Police...
prisons, only those who were not executed immediately after interrogation were sent on to the concentration camps.
Initially, Jews in the occupied countries were interned either in other KZ, but predominantly in
GhettosDuring World War II ghettos were established by the German Nazis to confine Jews and sometimes Gypsies into tightly packed areas of the cities of Eastern Europe turning them into de-facto concentration camps...
that were walled off parts of cities. All the Jews in western Poland (annexed into the Reich) were transported to ghettos in the
General GovernmentThe General Government refers to a part of the territories of Poland under German military occupation during World War II and that were a separate part of "Greater Germany"...
. Jews were used for labour in industries, but usually transported to work then returned to the KZ or the ghetto at night. Although these ghettoes were not intended to be extermination camps, and there was no official policy to kill people, thousands died due to hunger, disease and extreme conditions. During the German advance into Russia in 1941 and 1942 Jewish soldiers and civilians were systematically executed by the
EinsatzgruppenEinsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary groups that took part in the systematic killing of mostly civilians throughout occupied Eastern Europe during World War II.-Background:...
of the S.S. that followed the front-line troops. At the Wannsee ConferenceThe Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior officials of the Nazi German regime, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the conference was to inform administrative leaders of Departments responsible for various policies relating to Jews, that Reinhard Heydrich...
on 20 January 1942 the "Final SolutionThe Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan and execution of the systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II, resulting in the final, most deadly phase of the Holocaust...
" was decreed to exterminate all of the remaining Jews in Europe, Heydrich stated that there were still 11 million to be eliminated. To accomplish this special Vernichtungslager (
Extermination Camps) were to be organized. The first was Chełmno in which 152,000, mainly from the Łódź ghetto, were killed. The method for carrying out mass murder was tested and perfected here. During 1942 and 1943 further camps
Auschwitz-Birkenau IIAuschwitz-Birkenau was the largest of Nazi Germany's concentration camps and extermination camps, operational during World War II.The camp took its German name from the hosting town of Oświęcim. Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Oświęcim was annexed by Nazi Germany and...
, part of
MajdanekMajdanek was a German Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, established during German Nazi occupation of Poland. The camp operated from October 1, 1941 until July 22, 1944, when it was captured nearly intact by the advancing Soviet Red Army...
, Treblinka, Bełżec and
SobiborSobibor was a Nazi German extermination camp set up in the Lublin region of occupied Poland as part of Operation Reinhard; the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor. Jews, including Jewish Soviet prisoners of war , and possibly Gypsies were transported to Sobibor by rail, and...
were built for this purpose. Jews from other concentration camps, and from the ghettos, were transported to them from all over occupied Europe. In these six camps alone, an estimated 3.1 million Jews were killed in gas chambers and the bodies burned in massive crematoria. The Nazis realized that this was a criminal act and the action was shrouded in secrecy. The extermination camps were destroyed in 1944 and early 1945 and buried. However the Soviet armies overran Auschwitz and Majdanek before the evidence could be totally destroyed.
Another category of internment camp in Nazi Germany was the
Labor campA labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
(
ArbeitslagerArbeitslager is a German language word which means Labor camp.During World War II the Nazis operated several categories of Arbeitslager for different categories of inmates...
). They housed civilians from the occupied countries that were being used to work in industry, on the farms, in quarries, in mines and on the railroads. Approximately 12,000,000 forced laborers, most of whom were
Eastern EuropeEastern Europe is a region lying in the Eastern part of Europe. The term is highly context-dependent and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
ans, were employed in the German war economy inside the
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
. Although conditions were harsh and food and medical care inadequate, they were
not concentration camps. More workers died in them from Allied bombs (often, prisoners were condemned to digging up and defusing unexploded Allied bombs as a matter of punishment for stealing extra rations of food) or industrial accidents than from the difficult living conditions. The workers were mostly young and taken from the occupied countries, predominantly eastern Europe, but also many French and Italian. They were sometimes taken willingly, more frequently as a result of
lapankaŁapanka was the Polish name for a World War II practice in German-occupied Poland, whereby the German SS, Wehrmacht and Gestapo rounded up civilians on the streets of Polish cities.-History:...
in Polish, or rafle
in French language, in which people were collected on the street or in their home by police drives. However, for often very minor infractions of the rules, workers were imprisoned in special Arbeitserziehungslager
, GermanGerman is a West Germanic language, thus related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. It is one of the world's major languages and the most widely spoken first language in the European Union. Around the world, German is spoken by approximately 105 million native speakers and also by...
for Worker re-education camp, (abbreviated to AEL and sometimes referred to as Straflager). These punishment camps were operated by the
GestapoThe was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning in April 1934, it was under the overall administration of the Schutzstaffel under Heinrich Himmler in his position as leader of the SS and Chief of German Police...
and many of the inmates were executed or died from the brutal treatment.
Finally there was one category of internment camp, called
IlagIlag is an abbreviation of the German word Internierungslager. They were Internment camps established by the German Army in World War II to hold Allied civilians, caught in areas that were occupied by the German Army...
in which Allied, mainly British and American, civilians were held that had been caught behind front lines by the rapid advance of the German armies, or the sudden entry of the United States into the war. In these camps the Germans abided by the rules of the
Fourth Geneva ConventionThe Fourth Geneva Convention relates to the protection of civilians during times of war "in the hands" of an enemy and under any military occupation by a foreign power. This should not be confused with the better known Third Geneva Convention, which deals with the treatment of prisoners of war...
. Any deaths resulted from sickness or simply old age.
After World War II, internment camps were used by the Allied occupying forces to hold suspected Nazis, usually using the facilities of previous Nazi camps. They were all closed down by 1949. In
East GermanyThe German Democratic Republic was a Communist state that originated from the Soviet Zone of occupied Germany and the Soviet sector of occupied Berlin...
the communist government used prison camps to hold political prisoners, opponents of the communist regime or suspected Nazi collaborators.
- Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre
The Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre was a British Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre in the town of Bad Nenndorf, Germany, which operated from June 1945 to July 1947. Allegations of mistreatment of detainees by British troops resulted in a police investigation, a public controversy...
British-India
During both wars the British interned enemy nationals (mostly Germans), in 1939 including refugees from the Nazis as well as Germans who had acquired British citizenship, in India. Camps existed at:
- World War I
- Ahmednagar
Ahmednagar is a city of Ahmednagar District in the state of Maharashtra, India, on the west bank of the Sina river, about 120 km northeast of Pune and 120 km from Aurangabad. Ahmednagar is the largest district in the Maharashtra state of India. Sugar, milk and bank co-operatives thrive...
, also for internees from German East AfricaGerman East Africa was a German colony in East Africa, including what are now Burundi, Rwanda and Tanganyika...
, Sections A abysmally overcrowded with more than 1000 inmates in "medically condemned" old barracks and B for privileged (read: moneied) prisoners and officers. Later in 1915 a Parole Camp was set up.
- Diyatalawa
Diyatalawa is a garrison town in the central highlands of Sri Lanka, in the Badulla District of Uva Province. It is at an altitude of 1,499 m and has become a popular destination for local holiday makers...
(Ceylon)
- Belgaum
Belgaum Belgaum Belgaum (Kannada: ಬೆಳಗಾವಿ Belagavi is a city and a municipal corporation in Belgaum district in the state of Karnataka, India.It is the Fourth largest city of the Karnataka state behind Bangalore ,Mangalore and Mysore....
for women. Set up late 1915. March 1917: 214 inmates
- Kataphar for families
- World War II
- Ahmednagar
Ahmednagar is a city of Ahmednagar District in the state of Maharashtra, India, on the west bank of the Sina river, about 120 km northeast of Pune and 120 km from Aurangabad. Ahmednagar is the largest district in the Maharashtra state of India. Sugar, milk and bank co-operatives thrive...
(Central Internment Camp) inmates transferred to Dehradun February 1941.
- Diyatalawa
Diyatalawa is a garrison town in the central highlands of Sri Lanka, in the Badulla District of Uva Province. It is at an altitude of 1,499 m and has become a popular destination for local holiday makers...
(Ceylon). Aliens from Ceylon, Hongkong and Singapore. Many German sailors, 756 of them sent to Canada in June 1941 (Camp 33); other males to Dehradun, females to Parole Camps, when camp was closed 23. February 194.2
- Deolali
Deolali is a census town in Nashik District in the state of Maharashtra, India.-Demographics: India census , Deolali had a population of 50,617. Males constitute 55% of the population and females 45%. Deolali has an average literacy rate of 77%, higher than the national average of 59.5%: male...
from Feb. 1941, later also transferred to Dehradun. 11. Aug. 1941: 604 Germans.
- Dehradun
Dehradun , also sometimes spelled Dehra Doon, is the capital city of the Uttarakhand state in India, and the headquarters of Dehradun District....
main camp for males from Sept. 1941. Sensibly separated in Wings 1: pro-Nazi, 2: anti-Nazi, 3: Italians. From this camp the SS mountaineer Heinrich HarrerHeinrich Harrer was an Austrian mountaineer, sportsman, geographer, and author.He is best known for his books The White Spider and Seven Years in Tibet-Athletics:...
escaped to Tibet.
- Yercaud
Yercaud is a hill station near Salem, Tamil Nadu, India in the Servarayan range of hills in the Eastern Ghats. It is at an altitude of 1515 metres above the mean sea level. The town gets its name from the lake located at its center - in Tamil "Yeri" means "lake" and "Kaadu" means "forest"....
for females from Madras PresidencyMadras Presidency , also known as Madras Province and known officially as Presidency of Fort St. George, was a province of British India...
. Summer 1941: 98 inmates, closed late 1942.
- Ft. Williams (Calcutta), army camp, closed early 1940, males were sent to Ahmednagar, females to Katapahar
Katapahar is a ridge in Darjeeling town in the Indian state of West Bengal. Katapahar and Jalapahar ridges meet at Observatory Hill.The range on which Darjeeling is located is Y-shaped with the base resting at Katapahar and Jalapahar and two arms diverging north of Observatory Hill...
parole camp.
- Camp 17 initially in Ramgarh
Ramgarh Raj was a major Zamindari in the era of the British Raj.The areas that would later comprise the Ramgarh Raj had initially belonged to the Raja of Chhota Nagpur. Around the year AD 1368, the area witnessed unrest for reasons not now known. The Raja deputed two brothers by name Baghdeo and...
(BiharBihar is a state in eastern India. Bihar is the 12th largest state in terms of geographical size at 38,202 sq mi , and 3rd largest by population. Close to 85 percent of the population lives in villages...
), from July 1942 at DeoliDeoli is a Colony in South Delhi in the state of Delhi, India.-Geography:Deoli is located at . It has an average elevation of 262 metres .-Demographics:...
(RajputanaRājputāna, also called Rājwār, was the pre-1949 name of the present-day Indian state of Rājasthān, the largest state of the Republic of India in terms of area....
. For the surviving internees from the Dutch Indies.
- Smaller Parole Camps at Naini Tal, Kodaikanal
Kodaikanal is a city in the hills of the taluk division of the Dindigul district in the state of Tamil Nadu, India.Kodaikanal is referred to as the "Princess of Hill stations" and has a long history as a retreat and popular tourist destination...
and KatapaharKatapahar is a ridge in Darjeeling town in the Indian state of West Bengal. Katapahar and Jalapahar ridges meet at Observatory Hill.The range on which Darjeeling is located is Y-shaped with the base resting at Katapahar and Jalapahar and two arms diverging north of Observatory Hill...
(near DarjeelingDarjeeling is a town in the Indian state of West Bengal.It was part of Nepal. When India was ruled by British a treaty was signed to keep all three countries involved safe Sugauli Treaty was signed, in which many parts of Nepal were made Indian...
), were all closed by late 1942. Inmates transferred to (family reunions) to the camps near Poona:
- Sātāra
Satara is a town located in the Satara District of Maharashtra state of India. The name is derived from the seven hills surrounding the town. The town is 2320 ft...
from May 1940
- Purandhar
Purandhar is a taluka or tehsil of the Pune district of Maharashtra, India.The taluka got its name because of the mighty Maratha fort of the same name located in this area.Purandar is bordered by the following talukas;...
(lower Fort), initially for Jewish refugees, later also other Germans, many missionaries with families. In August 1945 116 Germans (45 children, 19 missionaries), 26 Italians (5 children), 68 other nationals (11 children)
Most internees were deported late 1946. Germans shipped to Hamburg were sent to the former Neuengamme concentration camp for de-Nazification.
Ireland
During
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, known in Ireland as the "Emergency", the Curragh camp was used as an internment camp. It was used to house German soldiers, mainly navy personnel stranded in neutral Ireland. A separate section was created for British soldiers, who had entered Irish territory in violation of the neutrality policy. It was also held republicans who had a suspected link to the I.R.A..
LuftwaffeLuftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1933 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956.Schweizer Luftwaffe is also the name of the Swiss Air...
(German air force) internees were held in Glencree, in what is now the
Glencree Centre for Peace and ReconciliationThe Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation is a non-governmental Christian organization located in Republic of Ireland. Its goal is to promote peace and reconciliation, especially as a response to the Troubles and its aftermath....
Italy
| Name of the camp | Date of establishment | Date of liberation | Estimated number of prisoners | Estimated number of deaths |
|---|
| Baranello Baranello is a comune in the Province of Campobasso in the Italian region Molise, located about 10 km southwest of Campobasso. This town draws it name as a derivative of Monte Vairano which was a hilltop Samnite village and now is an archeological site...
near CampobassoCampobasso is a city in southern Italy, the capital of the Molise region and of the province of Campobasso...
| | | | |
CampagnaCampagna is a small town and comune of the province of Salerno, in the Campania region of Southern Italy.-History:The town, located in a mountainous district, gradually lost importance in the 20th century...
near SalernoSalerno is a small city in Campania and is the capital of the province of the same name. It is located on the Gulf of Salerno on the Tyrrhenian Sea....
| | | | |
Casolli near ChietiChieti is a city in central Italy, 200 km northeast of Rome. It is the capital of the Province of Chieti in the Abruzzo region. Chieti lies on a crest along the Pescara River a few kilometers away from the Adriatic Sea, and with the Maiella and Gran Sasso mountains in the...
| | | | |
| Chiesanuova Chiesanuova is a minor municipality of San Marino. It has a population of 1,029 inhabitants in an area of 5.46 km².-Geography:...
near PaduaPadua is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice , in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area, having a population of c...
| June 1942 | | | |
| Cremona Cremona is a city in northern Italy, situated in Lombardy, on the left bank of the Po River in the middle of the Pianura Padana...
| | | | |
| Ferramonti di Tarsia Ferramonti di Tarsia, located near Cosenza in Southern Italy, was an internment camp for Jews and foreigns. It was the largest of the fifteen internment camps established by Mussolini between June and September, 1940....
near CosenzaCosenza is a city in Italy, located at the confluence of two rivers: the Busento and the Crathis. The municipal population is of around 70,000. The urban area, however, counts over 260,000 inhabitants....
| summer 1940 | September 4, 1943 | 3,800 | |
Finale Emila near ModenaModena is a city and a comune on the south side of the Po valley, in the Province of Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy....
| | | | |
| Gonars On February 23, 1942 the Italian fascist regime established a concentration camp in Gonars, a town with approx. 4,600 inhabitants near Palmanova in the Province of Udine in northeastern Italy.Mostly for prisoners from present day Slovenia and Croatia...
near PalmanovaPalmanova is a town in northeastern Italy, close to the border with Slovenia. It is located 20 km from Udine, 28 km from Gorizia and 55 km from Trieste near the junction of the Autostrada Alpe-Adria and the Autostrada Venezia-Trieste .Palmanova is famous for its fortress plan and...
| March 1942 | September 8, 1943 | 7,000 | 453; >500 |
LipariLipari is the largest of the Aeolian Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the north coast of Sicily, and the name of the island's main town...
| | | | |
| Malo Malo is a town in the province of Vicenza, Veneto, Italy. SP46 goes through it.Italian writer Luigi Meneghello was born in Malo in 1922 and remembered it in his first book Libera nos a Malo.-Sources:*...
near VeniceVenice is a city in northern Italy, the capital of the region Veneto, a population of 271,367 . Together with Padua, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area . The city historically was an independent nation...
| | | | |
| Molat | | | | |
| Monigo near Treviso Treviso is a city in Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Treviso and the municipality has 82,206 inhabitants : some 3,000 live within the Venetian walls or in the historical and monumental center, some 80,000 live in the urban center proper, while the city hinterland...
| June 1942 | | | |
| Montechiarugolo Montechiarugolo is a comune in the Province of Parma in the Italian region Emilia-Romagna, located about 80 km northwest of Bologna and about 13 km southeast of Parma....
near ParmaParma is a city in the Italian region of Emilia-Romagna famous for its architecture and the fine countryside around it. It is the home of the University of Parma, one of the oldest universities in the world....
| | | | |
| Ponza Ponza is the largest of the Italian Pontine Islands archipelago, located 33 km south of Cape Circeo in the Tyrrhenian Sea. It also the name of the commune of the island, a part of the province of Latina in the Lazio region....
| | | | |
| Potenza Potenza is a town and comune in the Southern Italian region of Basilicata . It is the capital of the province of Potenza and the Basilicata region....
| | | | |
| Rab The Rab concentration camp was an Italian concentration and internment camp on the Adriatic island of Rab during World War II. It was one of a considerable number of such camps built on Italian-governed territory during the war to hold civilians, those accused of partisan activities, as well as...
(on the island of RabRab is an island in Croatia and a town of the same name located just off the northern Croatian coast in the Adriatic Sea.The island is 22 km long, has an area of 93.6 km² and 9,480 inhabitants . The highest peak is Kamenjak at 408 meters...
) | July 1942 | September 11, 1943 | 15,000 | 2,000 |
| Renicci di Anghiari, near Arezzo Arezzo or Arretium is a city in central Italy, capital of the province of the same name, located in Tuscany. Arezzo is about south-east of Florence, at an elevation of 296 meters above sea level. In 2009 the population was about 99,000 people....
| October 1942 | | | |
SepinoSepino is a comune in the Province of Campobasso in the Italian region Molise, located about 20 km south of Campobasso. As of 31 December 2004, it had a population of 2,127 and an area of 62.6 km²....
near CampobassoCampobasso is a city in southern Italy, the capital of the Molise region and of the province of Campobasso...
| | | | |
| Treviso Treviso is a city in Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Treviso and the municipality has 82,206 inhabitants : some 3,000 live within the Venetian walls or in the historical and monumental center, some 80,000 live in the urban center proper, while the city hinterland...
| | | | |
Urbisaglia-History:Urbs Salvia was the meeting-point of several ancient roads; the road leading south from Ancona to Ascoli Piceno was crossed here at right angles by that from Fano to Tolentino, Septempeda and Nuceria Camellaria , while another led north-east from Urbs Salvia to Pausulae and the coast at...
| | | | |
| Vestone Vestone is a commune in the province of Brescia, in Lombardy. It is bounded by other communes of Lavenone and Barghe.-External links:*...
| | | | |
| Vinchiaturo Vinchiaturo is a comune in the Province of Campobasso in the Italian region Molise, located about 10 km southwest of Campobasso...
, near Campobasso | | | | |
| Visco Visco is a comune in the Province of Udine in the Italian region Friuli-Venezia Giulia, located about 45 km northwest of Trieste and about 20 km southeast of Udine...
, near Palmanova | winter 1942 | | | |
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rab_concentration_camp
http://www.romacivica.net/anpiroma/deportazione/deportazionecampi1b.htm
Japanese World War II Camps in Asia
For information in Dutch on Japanese concentration camps see
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jappenkamp
Japan conquered south-east Asia in a series of victorious campaigns over a few months from December 1941. By March 1942 many civilians, particularly westerners in the region's European colonies, found themselves behind enemy lines and were subsequently interned by the Japanese.
The nature of civilian internment varied from region to region. Some civilians were interned soon after invasion; in other areas the process occurred over many months. In total, approximately 130,000 Allied civilians were interned by the Japanese during this period of occupation. The exact number of internees will never be known as records were often lost, destroyed, or simply not kept.
The backgrounds of the internees were diverse. There was a large proportion of Dutch from the Dutch East Indies, but they also included Americans, British, and Australians. They included missionaries and their families, colonial administrators, and business people. Many had been living in the colonies for decades. Single women had often been nuns, missionaries, doctors, teachers and nurses.
Civilians interned by the Japanese were treated marginally better than the prisoners of war, but their death rates were the same. Although they had to work to run their own camps, few were made to labour on construction projects. The Japanese devised no consistent policies or guidelines to regulate the treatment of the civilians. Camp conditions and the treatment of internees varied from camp to camp. The general experience, however, was one of malnutrition, disease, and varying degrees of harsh discipline and brutality from the Japanese guards. Some
DutchThe Dutch people are the dominant ethnic group of the Netherlands.Dutch people, or descendants of Dutch people, are also found in migrant communities world wide, notably in Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and the United States....
women were forced into
sexual slaverySexual slavery is the organized coercion of unwilling people into different sexual practices. Sexual slavery may include single-owner sexual slavery, ritual slavery sometimes associated with traditional religious practices, slavery for primarily non-sexual purposes where sex is common, or forced...
.
The camps varied in size from four people held at Pangkalpinang in Sumatra to the 14,000 held in Tjihapit in Java. Some were segregated according to gender or race, there were also many camps of mixed gender. Some internees were held at the same camp for the duration of the war, and others were moved about. The buildings used to house internees were generally whatever was available, including schools, warehouses, universities, hospitals, and prisons.
Organisation of the internment camps varied by location. The Japanese administered some camps directly; others were administered by local authorities under Japanese control. Korean POWs of the Japanese were also used as camp guards. Some of the camps were left for the internees to self-govern. In the mixed and male camps, management often fell to the men who were experienced in administration before their internment. In the women's camps the leaders tended to be the women who had held a profession prior to internment. Boys over the age of ten were generally considered to be men by the Japanese and were often separated from their mothers to live and work in male camps.
One of the most famous concentration camps operated by the Japanese during World War II was at the
University of Santo TomasThe Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, The Catholic University of the Philippines , is a private Roman Catholic university run by the Order of Preachers in Manila...
in
ManilaThe City of Manila , or simply Manila or Maynila, is the capital of the Philippines and one of the 17 cities and municipalities that make up Metro Manila. It is located on the eastern shores of Manila Bay, on the western portion of the National Capital Region, in the western side of Luzon...
, the Philippines. The
DominicanThe Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic in the early 13th century in France...
university was expropriated by the Japanese at the beginning of the occupation, and was used to house mostly American civilians, but also British subjects, for the duration of the war. There, men, women and children suffered from malnutrition and poor sanitation. The camp was liberated in 1945.
The liberation of camps was not a uniform process. Many camps were liberated as the forces were recapturing territory. For other internees, freedom occurred many months after the surrender of the Japanese, and in the Dutch East Indies, liberated internees faced the uncertainty of the Indonesian war of independence.
Civilian internees were generally disregarded in official histories, and few received formal recognition. Ironically, however, civilian internees have become the subject of several influential books and films.
Agnes Newton KeithAgnes Jones Goodwillie Newton Keith was an American author best known for her three autobiographical accounts of life in North Borneo before, during, and after the Second World War. The second of these, Three Came Home, tells of her time in a Japanese POW and civilian internee camp in Sarawak and...
's account of internment in
SandakanSandakan is the second-largest city in Sabah, East Malaysia, on the north-eastern coast of Borneo. It is located on the east coast of the island and it is the administrative centre of Sandakan Division and was the former capital of British North Borneo...
and
Batu Lintang campBatu Lintang camp at Kuching, Sarawak on the island of Borneo was a Japanese internment camp during the Second World War. It was unusual in that it housed both Allied prisoners of war and civilian internees...
, Kuching,
Three Came HomeThree Came Home is a wartime film made by Twentieth Century-Fox, based on the memoirs of the same name by writer Agnes Newton Keith. It depicts Keith's life in North Borneo in the period immediately before the Japanese invasion in 1942, and her subsequent internment and suffering, separated from...
(1947), was one of the first of the memoirs. More recent publications include Jeanne Tuttle and Jolanthe Zelling's "Mammie's Journal of My Childhood" (2005); (Shirley Fenton-Huie's
The Forgotten Ones (1992) and Jan Ruff O'Herne's
Fifty Years of Silence (1997). Nevil Shute's novel
A Town Like AliceA Town Like Alice is a novel by the Australian author Nevil Shute. It tells the story of Jean Paget; as a prisoner of war in Malaya during World War II and then her return to Malaya after the war where she discovers something that leads her on the search for romance and to a small outback...
was filmed in 1956, and J. G. Ballard's
Empire of the SunEmpire of the Sun is a 1984 novel by J. G. Ballard which was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Like Ballard's earlier short story, "The Dead Time" , it is essentially fiction but draws extensively on Ballard's experiences in World War II.Ballard later wrote a sequel, entitled The...
in 1987. Other films and television dramas have included
TenkoTenko may refer to:*Tenko , a BBC television drama*Princess Tenko, a Japanese magician, upon whom the cartoon Tenko and the Guardians of the Magic was based...
and
Paradise RoadParadise Road is a 1997 film which tells the story of a group of women who are imprisoned in Sumatra during World War II. It is directed by Bruce Beresford and stars Glenn Close as beatific Adrienne Pargiter, Frances McDormand as the brash Dr...
.
See also: Manenggon
http://166.122.164.43/archive/2004/june/06-22-17.htm http://www.kuam.com/news/10206.aspx
Mexico
A draft report leaked by the office of Mexico's Special Prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo in 2006 mentioned the existence of army-run concentration camps during anti-guerilla campaigns in the state of
GuerreroThe State of Guerrero is a state in the southern meridional region of Mexico. With an area of , it occupies about 3.3% of Mexican territory. It borders the Pacific Ocean to the south , Michoacán to the west , Oaxaca to the east , and Mexico State , Morelos , and Puebla to the north...
in the 1970s.
Netherlands
In
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
both German and Allied soldiers and sailors that crossed into neutral
NetherlandsThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
were interned. The camp for the British, mostly sailors, was in
Groningen||-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |-| |}Groningen is the capital city of the province of Groningen in the Netherlands. With a population of 185,000, it is by far the largest city in the north of the Netherlands....
During
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
a camp was built in 1939 at Westerbork by the
DutchThe Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, constituting the major portion of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a parliamentary democratic constitutional monarchy. The Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east...
government for interning Jewish refugees who had fled
Nazi GermanyNazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany between 1933 and 1945, while it was led by Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Worker's Party . The name Third Reich refers to the state as the successor to the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages and the German...
. This camp was later used during the German occupation as a waystation for Dutch Jews eventually deported to extermination camps in the East. Amersfoort (1941–1945) was a transit camp. The Herzogenbusch (1943–1944) was a concentration camp.
After the war the Dutch government launched the Operation Black Tulip and started to gather civil population of German background to concentration camps near the German border, especially
NijmegenNijmegen is a municipality and a city in the east of the Netherlands, near the German border. It is considered to be the oldest city in the Netherlands and celebrated its 2000th year of existence in 2005.- History :...
, in order to deport them from the country. In total around 15 % of the German population in the Netherlands was deported.
New Zealand
In
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
German civilians living in New Zealand were interned in camps on
MotuiheMotuihe Island lies between Motutapu and Waiheke islands in the Hauraki Gulf of New Zealand, close to the Auckland area. The island measures about 179 ha, of which around 18 ha are remnants of coastal forest...
and Somes Islands. German, Italian and Japanese civilians were interned in
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
North Korea
North Province of Hamkyong-Life Imprisonment Zone
1. Onsong Changpyong Family Camp No. 12 (relocated in May 1987)
2. Chongsong Family Camp No. 13 (relocated in December 1990)
3. Hoeryong Family Camp No. 22
4. Chongjin Singles' Prison No. 25
5. Kyongsong Family Camp No. 11 (relocated in October 1989)
6. Hwasong Family Camp No. 16
South Province of Hamkyong
7. Yodok Offenders and Family Camp No. 15
(sectors for re-education and life imprisonment)
North Province of Pyong'an
8. Chonma Family Camp No. 27 (relocated in November 1990)
South Province of Pyong'an
9. Kaechon Family Camp No. 14
10. Pyongyang Seungho Area Hwachon dong Offender's Camp No. 26 (relocated in January 1990)
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea , is a state in East Asia, occupying the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. Its capital and largest city is Pyongyang. The Korean Demilitarized Zone serves as the buffer area between North Korea and South Korea...
is known to operate five concentration camps, currently accommodating a total of over 200,000 prisoners, though the only one that has allowed outside access is Camp #15 in
YodokYodŏk is a concentration camp in North Korea. It is located in Yodŏk-gun in South Hamgyong Province. The official name is Kwan-li-so No...
, South Hamgyong Province. Once condemned as political criminals in North Korea, the defendant and his or her family are incarcerated in one of the camps without trial and cut off from all outside contact. Prisoners reportedly work 14 hour days at hard labor and/or ideological re-education. Starvation and disease are commonplace. Political criminals invariably receive life sentences, however their families are usually released after 3 year sentences, if they pass political examinations after extensive study.
Concentration camps came into being in North Korea in the wake of the country's liberation from Japanese colonial rule at the end of World War II. Those persons considered "adversary class forces", such as landholders, Japanese collaborators, religious devotees and families of those who migrated to the South, were rounded up and detained in a large facility. Additional camps were established later in earnest to incarcerate political victims in power struggles in the late 1950s and 60s and their families and overseas Koreans who migrated to the North. The number of camps saw a marked increase later in the course of cementing the Kim Il Sung dictatorship and the
Kim Jong-ilKim Jong-il is the paramount leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea...
succession. About a dozen concentration camps were in operation until the early 1990s, the figure of which is believed to have been curtailed to five today due to increasing criticism of the North's perceived human rights abuses from the international community and the North's internal situation.
Perhaps the most well-known depiction of life in the North Korean camps has been provided by
Kang Chol-hwanKang Chol-Hwan is a defector from North Korea. As a child he was imprisoned in the Yodok concentration camp for 10 years; after his release he fled the country, first to China and eventually to South Korea...
in his memoir
The Aquariums of PyongyangThe Aquariums of Pyongyang, by Kang Chol-Hwan and Pierre Rigoulot, is an account of the imprisonment of Kang Chol-Hwan and his family in the Yodok concentration camp in North Korea....
.
People's Republic of China
Concentration camps in the
People's Republic of ChinaThe People's Republic of China , commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the most populous in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately one-fifth of the world's population...
are called
LaogaiLaogai , the abbreviation for Láodòng Gǎizào , which means "reform through labor," is a slogan of the Chinese criminal justice system and has been used to refer to the use of prison labor and prison farms in the People's Republic of China . It is estimated that in the last 50 years more than 50...
, which means "reform through labor". The communist-era camps began at least in the 1960s and were filled with anyone who had said anything critical of the government, or often just random people grabbed from their homes to fill quotas. The entire society was organized into small groups in which loyalty to the government was enforced, so that anyone with dissident viewpoints was easily identifiable for enslavement. These camps were modern slave
labor campA labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
s, organized like factories.
There are accusations that Chinese labor camp produce products are often sold in foreign countries with the profits going to the PRC government. Products include everything from green tea to industrial engines to coal dug from mines.
The use of prison labor is an interesting case study of the interaction between capitalism and prison labor. On the one hand, the downfall of socialism has reduced revenue to local governments increasing pressure for local governments to attempt to supplement their income using prison labor. On the other hand, prisoners do not make a good workforce, and the products produced by prison labor in China are of extremely low quality and have become unsellable on the open market in competition with products made by ordinary paid labor.
An insider's view from the 1950s to the 1990s is detailed in the books of
Harry WuHarry Wu is an activist for human rights in the People's Republic of China. Now a resident and citizen of the United States, Wu spent 19 years in Chinese labor camps, for which he popularized the term laogai. In 1996 the Columbia Human Rights Law Review awarded Wu its second Award for Leadership...
, including
Troublemaker and
The Laogai. He spent almost all of his adult life as a prisoner in these camps for criticizing the government while he was a young student in college. He almost died several times, but eventually escaped to the US. Party officials have argued that he far overstates the present role of Chinese
labor campA labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
s and ignores the tremendous changes that have occurred in China since then.
There have been reports of
Falun GongFalun Gong is a system of beliefs and practices founded in China by Li Hongzhi in 1992. The practice emerged at the end of China's "qigong boom" as a form of qigong practice. Its teachings are influenced by both Taoism and Buddhism.The number of Falun Gong practitioners is unknown, and the group...
practitioners being detained Sujiatun Concentration Camp. It has been accused that Falun Gong practitioners are killed for their organs, which are then sold to medical facilities. The Chinese government rejects these allegations . US State Department visited the alleged camp on two occasions, first unannounced, and found the allegation not credible. Chinese dissident and Executive Director of the Laogai Research Foundation,
Harry WuHarry Wu is an activist for human rights in the People's Republic of China. Now a resident and citizen of the United States, Wu spent 19 years in Chinese labor camps, for which he popularized the term laogai. In 1996 the Columbia Human Rights Law Review awarded Wu its second Award for Leadership...
, having sent his own investigators to the site, was unable to substantiate the claims, and believes the reports were fabricated.
See also:
human rights in the People's Republic of ChinaSince the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, the human rights issue of China has come to the forefront. Multiple sources, including the U.S. State Department's annual People's Republic of China human rights reports, as well as studies from other groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights...
Poland
From 1934-39 Poland established a camp for the internment of political opponents, Ukrainian nationalists and Communists in Bereza Kartuzka (now in Belarus).
- Bereza Kartuska Detention Camp
During World War II Nazi Germany established many of its concentration camps in Poland. After World War 2 Soviet Army and Communist Poland used some of the former German concentration camps as POW camps and later as internment camps where opponents of the communists and Soviets, as well as Ukrainians and ethnic Germans or their sympathizers, were imprisoned.
- Central Labour Camp Potulice
Central Labour Camp Potulice was a detention centre for Germans and anti-communist Poles established by Polish Communist authorities after the end of World War II in Potulice, in place of the former German Nazi Potulice concentration camp. The camp was in operation since 1945 until 1950.A total of...
- Central Labour Camp Jaworzno
Central Labour Camp Jaworzno was a concentration camp in Jaworzno, Poland. It operated from 1943 until 1956, first run by Nazi Germany and then by the Soviet Union with the People's Republic of Poland...
- Zgoda labour camp
The Zgoda labour camp was a concentration camp for Germans and Silesians in Communist Poland operated in 1945 in Świętochłowice, Silesia, ....
- Łambinowice
Attempts were later made to bring two of the camp commandants to justice;
Salomon MorelSalomon Morel was between February and November 1945 a member of the Urząd Bezpieczeństwa and the commandant of the Zgoda camp in Świętochłowice, Poland. The camp held Upper Silesian local population listed on Volksliste, and some people from other regions and abroad...
and Czesław Gęborski.
Russia and the Soviet Union
In Imperial Russia,
labor campA labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
s were known by the name
katorgaKatorga was a system of penal servitude of the prison farm type in Imperial Russia. Prisoners were sent to remote camps in vast uninhabited areas of Siberia—where voluntary labourers were never available in satisfactory numbers—and forced to perform hard labour...
.
In the
Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The name is a translation of the , tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated СССР, SSSR. The common short name is Soviet Union, from , Sovetskiy Soyuz...
, concentration camps were called simply
camps, almost always plural ("lagerya"). These were used as forced
labor campA labor camp is a simplified detention facility where inmates are forced to engage in penal labor. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons...
s, and were often filled with political prisoners. After
Aleksandr SolzhenitsynAleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Soviet and Russian novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his writings he made the world aware of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system — particularly The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, his two...
's book they became known to the rest of the world as
GulagsThe Gulag or GULAG was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. The term is infamous for its association with remote places where prisoners were kept and sometimes disappeared...
, after the branch of
NKVDThe People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including...
(state security service) that managed them. (In the
Russian languageRussian is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages, and the largest native language in Europe...
, the term is used to denote the whole system, rather than individual camps.)
In addition to what is sometimes referred to as the GULAG proper (consisting of the "corrective labor camps") there were "corrective labor colonies", originally intended for prisoners with short sentences, and "special resettlements" of deported peasants. At its peak, the system held a combined total of 2,750,000 prisoners. In all, perhaps more than 18,000,000 people passed through the
Gulag in 1929-1953, with further millions being deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union.
Of the 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war captured by the Germans, 3.5 million had died while in German captivity by the end of the war. The survivors on their return to the USSR were treated as traitors (see Order No. 270). Over 1.5 million surviving
Red ArmyThe Red Army The Red Army The Red Army was the Soviet government’s revolutionary militia beginning in the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the USSR. Since 1946, after the Second World War, it was called the Soviet Army.The 'Red...
soldiers imprisoned by the Germans were sent to the
GulagThe Gulag or GULAG was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. The term is infamous for its association with remote places where prisoners were kept and sometimes disappeared...
.
After
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, some 3,000,000
German soldiers and civilians were sent to Soviet labor campsForced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union was considered by the Soviet Union to be part of German war reparations for the damage inflicted by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union during World War II.Poland, France, the United Kingdom and the U.S...
, as part of
war reparationsWar reparations refers to the monetary compensation intended to cover damage or injury during a war. Generally, the term war reparations refers to money or goods changing hands, rather than such property transfers as the annexation of land....
by labor force. Only about 2,000,000 returned to Germany.
A special kind of forced labor, informally called
sharashkaSharashka was an informal name for secret research and development laboratories in the Soviet Gulag labor camp system...
, was for engineering and scientific labor. The Soviet rocket designer Sergey Korolev worked in a "sharashka", as did
Lev TermenLéon Theremin was a Russian inventor. He is most famous for his invention of the theremin, the first electronic musical instrument. He is also the inventor of interlace, a technique of improving the picture quality of a video signal, widely used in video and television technology...
and many other prominent Russians. Solzhenitsyn's book
The First CircleThe First Circle is a novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn released in 1968.The novel details the life of the occupants of a gulag prison camp located in the Moscow suburbs, the Marfino sharashka...
describes life in a
sharashka.
An extensive
List of Gulag camps is being compiled based on official sources.
During war in Chechnia, in 1994 Russians founded many filtration camps for Chechen detainees. They were more like concentration camp as human rights were often disregarded and the mortality rate was nearly 80%. In 2001 in this objects Russians gathered 20 000 Chechen men and boys.
Serbia
During World War II:
- Banjica concentration camp
Banjica concentration camp was a Nazi German concentration camp from June 1941 to September 1944 in World War II, located in the eponymous suburb of Belgrade in what was then Yugoslavia. It started as a center for holding hostages, but later included Jews, Serbian communists, Roma, and captured...
(near Belgrade)
- Sajmište concentration camp
Sajmište concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp, located in the Independent State of Croatia, on the outskirts of Belgrade. It was established in December 1941 and shut down in September 1944.The majority of Serbian Jews were killed in the Sajmište camp.-Establishment:In the beginning,...
(near Belgrade)
- Crveni krst
Crveni Krst concentration camp , also known as logor Crveni Krst or Lager Niš , was a concentration camp located in Crveni Krst, in the industrial zone of the Serbian city of Niš, and operated by the Nazis during the Second World War.It is estimated that around 30,000 persons went through this...
(in Niš)
- Dulag 183
Dulag 183 was the name of the German transit camp for POWs in WWII Serbia located in the town of Šabac. This camp was opened in September 1941, and it closed in September 1944. This camp was also used for partisan POWs, members of their families, and the extermination of Jews and Roma people...
(in Šabac)
- Svilara (Pančevo)
- Paraćin
During the
Yugoslav WarsThe Yugoslav Wars were a series of violent conflicts fought in former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the 1990s and 2001...
:
- Sremska Mitrovica concentration camp (in Sremska Mitrovica)
- Stajićevo camp
The Stajićevo camp was an agricultural farm in Stajićevo near Zrenjanin, Serbia where Croatian prisoners of war and civilians were kept by Serbian authorities. The camp also acted as a transit facility where prisoners were taken before being moved to the Sremska Mitrovica camp...
Slovakia
During the Second World War, the Slovak government made a small number (Novaky, Sered) of transit camps for Jewish citizens. They were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Ravensbruck concentration camps. For German help with Aryanization of Slovakia, the Slovak government paid a fee of 500 Reichsmark per Jew.
Spain
Although the first modern concentration camps used to systematically dissuade rebels from fighting are usually attributed to the British during the Boer War, in the
Spanish-American WarThe Spanish–American War was an armed military conflict between Spain and the United States that took place between April and August 1898, over the issues of the liberation of Cuba. The war began after American demands for the resolution of the Cuban fight for independence were rejected by Spain...
, forts and camps were used by the Spanish in Cuba to separate rebels from their agricultural support bases. Upwards of 200,000 Cubans died by disease and famine in these environments.
http://www.spanamwar.com/proctorspeech.htm
Sri Lanka
According to international aid sources outbreaks of contagious diseases within the camps have caused thousands of deaths due to diarrhoea, hepatitis & dysentery. It has been estimated that about 1,400 people are dying every week at the camps, most of the deaths as a result of water-borne diseases, particularly diarrhoea .
Sweden
During the Second World War, the Swedish government operated eight internment camps.
- The most famous is probably Storsien
Storsien is a small village in Kalix Municipality in northern Sweden. It is best known for the internment camp located there where about 300–370 communists and pacifists were held during the winter of 1939–1940....
outside Kalix in Norrbotten where about 300-370 communistsCommunism is a socioeconomic structure and political ideology that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general. Karl Marx posited that communism would be the final stage in human...
, syndicalistsSyndicalism is a type of economic system proposed as a replacement for capitalism and state socialism which uses federations of collectivized trade unions. For adherents, labor unions are the potential means of both overcoming economic aristocracy and running society fairly in the interest of the...
and pacifistsPacifism is the opposition to war or violence as a means of settling disputes or gaining advantage. Pacifism covers a spectrum of views ranging from the belief that international disputes can and should be peacefully resolved; to calls for the abolition of the institutions of the military and war;...
were kept during the winter 1939-1940. Other camps were
- Naartijärvi east of Luleå
Luleå is a city on the coast of northern Sweden with 45,467 inhabitants in 2005. It is the seat of Luleå Municipality and the capital of Norrbotten County.- Geography :...
- Öxnered at Vänersborg
Vänersborg is a locality and the seat of Vänersborg Municipality, Västra Götaland County, Sweden with 21,672 inhabitants in 2005. Until 1997 it was the capital of Älvsborg County, which was dissolved in 1998. Since 1999 Vänersborg is the seat of the regional parlament of Västra Götaland County...
- Grytan outside Östersund
Östersund is an urban area in Jämtland in the middle of Sweden. It is the seat of Östersund Municipality and the capital of Jämtland County. Östersund is located at the shores of Sweden's fifth largest lake, Storsjön, opposite the island Frösön, and is the only city in Jämtland...
- Bercut, a boat for sailors outside Dalarö
Dalarö is a locality situated in Haninge Municipality, Stockholm County, Sweden with 1,190 inhabitants in 2005.It is situated south-east of Stockholm and is part of Metropolitan Stockholm and serves as a recreational summer spot for Stockholmers...
- Vindeln: constructed in Västerbotten
', is a province or landskap in the north of Sweden. It borders Ångermanland, Lapland, Norrbotten and the Gulf of Bothnia. It is famous for the cheese with the same name as the province.- Administration :...
in 1943
- Stensele: constructed in Västerbotten in 1943
- Lövnäsvallen outside Sveg
Sveg is a locality and the seat of Härjedalen Municipality in Jämtland County, Sweden with 2,633 inhabitants in 2005.The Swedish author Henning Mankell was brought up in Sveg, and it is the setting for his crime novel Danslärarens återkomst .- References :...
In May 1941 a total of ten camps for 3000-3500 were planned, but towards the end of 1941 the plans were put on ice and in 1943 the last camp was closed down. All the records were burned. After the war many of those who had been put in the camps had trouble finding work as few wanted to hire "subversive elements".
The navy had at least one special detainment ship for communists and "troublemakers".
Most of the camps were not labour camps with the exception of Vindeln and Stensele where the interns were used to build a secret airbase.
Foreign soldiers were put in camps in Långmora and Smedsbo. German refugees and deserters in Rinkaby. After the Second World War three camps were used for Baltic refugees (including 150 Baltic soldiers) Ränneslätt, Rinkaby and Gälltofta.
Bermuda
During the
Second Boer WarThe Second Boer War , commonly referred to as The Boer War and also known as the South African War , the Anglo-Boer War and in Afrikaans as the Anglo-Boereoorlog or Tweede Vryheidsoorlog , or the Engelse oorlog was fought...
, several small islands in
Bermuda'sBermuda is a British overseas territory in the North Atlantic Ocean. Located off the east coast of the United States, it is situated around 1,770 kilometres northeast of Miami, Florida, and 1,350 kilometres south of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada...
Great SoundThe Great Sound is a body of water shaped by the islands of Bermuda. It dominates the southwest of the island chain, and forms a natural harbour. It is surrounded on all sides by the islands, except for the northeast, where it is open to the Atlantic Ocean....
were used as natural concentration camps, despite protest from the local government. 4,619 Boers was interned on these islands, compared to Bermuda's total population of around 17,000; at least 34 Boers are known to have not survived the transit to Bermuda.
Channel Islands
AlderneyAlderney is the most northerly of the Channel Islands and a British Crown dependency. It is part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey. It is long and wide. The area is , making it the third largest island of the Channel Islands, and the second largest in the Bailiwick...
in the
Channel IslandsThe Channel Islands are an archipelago in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two separate bailiwicks: the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey...
was the only place in the British Isles where German concentration camps were established during the
Occupation of the Channel IslandsThe Occupation of the Channel Islands refers to the military occupation of the Channel Islands by Germany during World War II which lasted from 30 June 1940 until the Liberation on 9 May 1945...
. In January 1942, the occupying German forces established four camps, called
HelgolandLager Helgoland was a Nazi concentration camp on Alderney in the Channel Islands, named after the Frisian Island of Heligoland , a former British possession handed over to Germany in 1890....
, Norderney,
BorkumLager Borkum was a Nazi concentration camp on Alderney, in the Channel Islands, named after the East Frisian Island of Borkum.The Germans built four concentration camps on the island, subcamps of the Neuengamme concentration camp...
and
SyltLager Sylt was a Nazi concentration camp on Alderney in the Channel Islands, in operation between March 1943 and June 1944. The Germans built four concentration camps on the island, subcamps of the Neuengamme concentration camp...
(after the
German North Sea islandsThe East Frisian Islands are a chain of islands in the North Sea, off the coast of East Frisia in Lower Saxony, Germany.The seven inhabited islands are, from west to east:#Borkum#Juist#Norderney#Baltrum#Langeoog...
), where captive Russians and other east Europeans were used as slave labour to build
Atlantic WallThe Atlantikwall was an extensive system of coastal fortifications built by the German Third Reich in 1942 until 1944 during World War II along the western coast of Europe to defend against an anticipated Allied invasion of the mainland from Great Britain.-History:On March 23, 1942 Führer...
defences on the island. Around 460 prisoners died in the Alderney camps.
Cyprus
After World War II, British efforts to prevent
Jewish emigrationAliyah is the immigration of Jews to Eretz Israel. It is a basic tenet of Zionist ideology, and a value in almost all movements of Judaism...
into their Palestine Mandate led to the construction of internment camps in
CyprusCyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is a Eurasian island country situated in the eastern Mediterranean, south of Turkey and west of Syria and Lebanon....
where up to 30,000 Holocaust survivors were held at any one time to prevent their entry into the country. They were released in February 1949 after the founding of Israel.
Isle of Man
During
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
the British government
internedInternment is the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the meaning as: "The action of ‘interning’; confinement within the limits of a country or place"...
male citizens of the
Central PowersThe Central Powers was one of the two sides that participated in World War I, the other being the Entente Powers.-Member states:...
, principally
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
,
Austria-HungaryAustria–Hungary, also known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Dual Monarchy or the k.u.k. Monarchy, or Dual State, was a monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in Central Europe...
and Ottoman Turkey. They were held mainly in internment camps at Knockaloe, close to
Peel||-||-||-|Peel is a town on the Isle of Man, in the parish of German. It is often called the only "city" because it is the home of the island's cathedral. It is the third largest town on the island after Douglas and Ramsey and the fourth largest settlement as Onchan has the second largest...
, and a smaller one near
Douglasright|thumb|250px|Loch Promenade, which runs nearly the entire length of beachfront in Douglasright|thumb|250px|Sea terminal in DouglasDouglas is the capital and largest town of the Isle of Man, with a population of 26,218 people . It is located at the mouth of the River Douglas, and a sweeping...
.
During
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, about 8,000 people were interned in
BritainThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
, many being held in the same camps at Knockaloe and Douglas on the
Isle of ManThe Isle of Man , or Mann , is a self-governing British Crown dependency, located in the Irish Sea between the islands of Britain and Ireland. The head of state is Queen Elizabeth II, who holds the title of Lord of Mann. The Crown is represented by a Lieutenant Governor...
. The internees included
enemy alienIn law, an enemy alien is a citizen of a country which is in a state of conflict with the land in which he or she is located. Usually, but not always, the countries are in a state of declared war.-Australia:...
s from the
Axis PowersThe Axis powers comprised the countries that were opposed to the Allies during World War II. The three major Axis powers—Germany, Italy, and Japan—were part of a military alliance on the signing of the Tripartite Pact in September 1940, which officially founded the Axis powers...
, principally
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
and
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
.
Initially, refugees who had fled from
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
were also included, as were suspected British
NaziNazism, known officially in German as National Socialism , is the totalitarian ideology and practices of the Nazi Party or National Socialist German Workers’ Party under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.Nazism is often considered...
sympathisers such as
British Union of FascistsThe British Union of Fascists was a political party in the United Kingdom formed in 1932 by a former Labour government minister and former MP of the Conservative Party, Sir Oswald Mosley.-Background:...
leader
Oswald MosleySir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet was a British politician, known principally as the founder of the British Union of Fascists...
. The British government rounded up 74,000 German,
AustriaAustria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.3 million people in Central Europe. It borders both Germany and the Czech Republic to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the west...
n and
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
aliens. Within 6 months the 112 alien tribunals had individually summoned and examined 64,000 aliens, and the vast majority were released, having been found to be "friendly aliens" (mostly Jews); examples include
Hermann BondiSir Hermann Bondi, KCB, FRS was an Anglo-Austrian mathematician and cosmologist. He is best known for developing the steady-state theory of the universe with Fred Hoyle and Thomas Gold as an alternative to the Big Bang theory, but his most lasting legacy will probably be his important...
and
Thomas GoldThomas Gold was an Austrian-born astrophysicist, a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the Royal Society . Gold was one of three young Cambridge scientists who in the 1950s proposed the now mostly abandoned 'steady...
and later members of the
Amadeus QuartetThe Amadeus Quartet was a world famous string quartet founded in 1947.Because of their Jewish origin, violinists Norbert Brainin, Siegmund Nissel and Peter Schidlof were driven out of Vienna after Hitler's Anschluss of 1938...
. British nationals were detained under
Defence Regulation 18BDefence Regulation 18B, often referred to as simply 18B, was the most famous of the Defence Regulations used by the British Government during World War II. The complete technical reference name for this rule was: Rule 18B of the Emergency Powers Act . It allowed for the internment of people...
. Eventually only 2,000 of the remainder were interned. Initially they were shipped overseas, but that was halted when a German U boat sank the SS
Arandora StarSS Arandora Star was a British registered cruise ship operated by the Blue Star lines from the late 1920s through the 1930s. At the onset of World War II she was assigned as a troop transport and moving refugees. At the end of June 1940 she was assigned the task of transporting German and Italian...
in July 1940 with the loss of 800 internees, though this was not the first loss that had occurred. The last internees were released late in 1945, though many were released in 1942. In Britain, internees were housed in camps and prisons. Some camps had tents rather than buildings with internees sleeping directly on the ground. Men and women were separated and most contact with the outside world was denied. A number of prominent Britons including writer
H. G. WellsHerbert George Wells was an English author, best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many genres, including contemporary novels, history, and social commentary....
campaigned against the internment of refugees.
Kenya
During the 1954-60 Mau-Mau uprising in
KenyaThe Republic of Kenya is a country in East Africa. Lying along the Indian Ocean, at the equator, Kenya is bordered by Ethiopia , Somalia , Tanzania , Uganda plus Lake Victoria , and Sudan . The capital city is Nairobi. Kenya spans an area about 85% the size of France or Texas...
, camps were established to hold suspected rebels. It is unclear how many were held but estimates range up to 1.5 million - or practically the entire
KikuyuThe Kikuyu are Kenya's most populous ethnic group. 'Kikuyu' is the Swahilized form of the proper name and pronunciation of Gĩkũyũ although they refer to themselves as the Agĩkũyũ people....
population. Between 130,000 and 300,000 are thought to have died as a result. Maltreatment is said to have included torture and summary executions. In addition as many as a million members of the
KikuyuThe Kikuyu are Kenya's most populous ethnic group. 'Kikuyu' is the Swahilized form of the proper name and pronunciation of Gĩkũyũ although they refer to themselves as the Agĩkũyũ people....
tribe were subjected to ethnic cleansing. (Sources: . R. Edgerton, Mau Mau: An African Crucible, London 1990 page 180; C. Elkins,“Detention, Rehabilitation & the Destruction of Kikuyu Society”in Mau Mau and Nationhood, Editors Odhiambo and Lonsdale, Oxford 2003 pages 205-7; C. Elkins, "Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End Of Empire In Kenya", 2005).
Northern Ireland
During the Anglo-Irish War, 12,000 Irishmen were held without trial.
One of the most famous example of modern
internment—and one which made world headlines—occurred in
Northern IrelandNorthern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and it is situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
in 1971, when hundreds of
nationalistsIrish nationalism comprises political and social movements and sentiment inspired by a love for Irish culture, language and history, and a sense of pride in Ireland and the Irish people...
and
republicansIrish republicanism is an ideology based on the belief that all of Ireland should be an independent republic.In 1801, under the Act of Union, the Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland merged to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland...
were arrested by the
British ArmyThe British Army is the land armed forces branch of the British Armed Forces. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdoms of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England and Scotland and...
and the
Royal Ulster ConstabularyThe Royal Ulster Constabulary GC was the name of the police force in Northern Ireland from 1922 to 2001. It was founded on 1 June 1922 out of the Royal Irish Constabulary , the Belfast Borough Police Force and the Londonderry Borough Police Force...
on the orders of the then
Prime Minister of Northern IrelandThe Prime Minister of Northern Ireland was the de facto head of the Government of Northern Ireland. No such office was provided for in the Government of Ireland Act 1920. However the Lord Lieutenant, as with Governors-General in other Westminster Systems such as in Canada, chose to appoint someone...
,
Brian FaulknerArthur Brian Deane Faulkner, Baron Faulkner of Downpatrick, PC was the sixth and last Prime Minister of Northern Ireland from March 1971 until his resignation in March 1972...
, with the backing of the British government. Historians generally view that period of internment as inflaming sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland while failing in its stated aim of arresting members of the paramilitary Provisional IRA, because many of the people arrested were completely unconnected with that organisation but had had their names appear on the list of those to be interned through bungling and incompetence, and over 100 IRA men escaped arrest. The backlash against internment and its bungled application contributed to the decision of the British government under Prime Minister
Edward HeathSir Edward Richard George Heath, KG, MBE , often known as Ted Heath, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1974 and leader of the Conservative Party from 1965 to 1975...
to suspend the
Stormont governmentStormont government can refer to:* Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Northern Ireland, 1922-1972* Northern Ireland Executive, since 1998...
al system in Northern Ireland and replace it with
direct rule from London, under the authority of a British
Secretary of State for Northern IrelandThe Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is the chief minister in the government of the United Kingdom with responsibilities for Northern Ireland, at the head of the Northern Ireland Office...
.
From 1971 internment began, beginning with the arrest of 342 suspected republican guerrillas and paramilitary members on August 9. They were held at
HM PrisonHer Majesty's Prison Service is an Executive Agency in the United Kingdom tasked with managing most of the prisons within England and Wales. .The Director-General of the National Offender Management Service, currently Phil Wheatley, is the...
MazeHer Majesty's Prison Maze was a prison used to house paramilitary prisoners during the Northern Ireland Troubles from mid-1971 to mid-2000....
. By 1972, 924 men were interned. Serious rioting ensued, and 23 people died in three days. The British government attempted to show some balance by arresting some
loyalistIn general, a loyalist is someone who maintains loyalty to an established government, political party, or sovereign, especially during war or revolutionary change such as the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War...
paramilitaries later, but out of the 1,981 men interned, only 107 were loyalists. Internment was ended in 1975, but had resulted in increased support for the IRA and created political tensions which culminated in the
1981 Irish Hunger StrikeThe 1981 Irish hunger strike was the culmination of a five-year protest during The Troubles by Irish republican prisoners in Northern Ireland. The protest began as the blanket protest in 1976, when the British government withdrew Special Category Status for convicted paramilitary prisoners...
and the death of
Bobby SandsRobert Gerard Sands , commonly known as Bobby Sands, , was an Irish Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer and member of the United Kingdom Parliament who died on hunger strike while in HM Prison Maze .He was the leader of the 1981 hunger strike, in which Irish republican prisoners protested...
MP. The imprisonment of people under anti-terrorism laws specific to Northern Ireland continued until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, but these laws required the right to a fair trial be respected. However non-jury Diplock courts tried paramilitary-related trials, to prevent jury intimidation.
Many of those interned were held in a detention facility located at
RAF Long KeshRAF Long Kesh was a Royal Air Force station at Maze, Lisburn, Northern Ireland, from 1941 until 1971.Various aircraft operated from the base during World War II, including the Supermarine Seafire and Spitfire....
military base, later known as the
Maze PrisonHer Majesty's Prison Maze was a prison used to house paramilitary prisoners during the Northern Ireland Troubles from mid-1971 to mid-2000....
outside
BelfastBelfast is the capital of and the largest city in Northern Ireland, a constituent country of the United Kingdom. It is the seat of devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly. It is the largest urban area in the province of Ulster, and the second largest city on the island of...
. Internment had previously been used as a means of repressing the
Irish Republican ArmyThe Irish Republican Army was an Irish republican revolutionary military organisation. It was descended from the Irish Volunteers, an organisation established on 25 November 1913 that staged the Easter Rising in April 1916...
. It was used between 1939 - 1945 and 1956 - 1962. On all these occasions, internment has had a somewhat limited success.
South Africa
The term
concentration camp was first used by the British military during the
Boer WarThe Second Boer War , commonly referred to as The Boer War and also known as the South African War , the Anglo-Boer War and in Afrikaans as the Anglo-Boereoorlog or Tweede Vryheidsoorlog , or the Engelse oorlog was fought...
(1899-1902). Facing attack by
BoerBoer is the Dutch word for farmer which came to denote the descendants of the proto Afrikaans-speaking pastoralists of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 18th century as well as those who left the Cape Colony during the 19th century to settle in the Orange Free State,...
guerrillasGuerrilla warfare is the irregular warfare warfare and combat in which a small group of combatants use mobile military tactics in the form of ambushes and raids to combat a larger and less mobile formal army....
, British forces rounded up the
BoerBoer is the Dutch word for farmer which came to denote the descendants of the proto Afrikaans-speaking pastoralists of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 18th century as well as those who left the Cape Colony during the 19th century to settle in the Orange Free State,...
women and children as well as black people living on Boer land, and sent them to 34
tentA tent is a shelter consisting of sheets of fabric or other material draped over or attached to a frame of poles or attached to a supporting rope. While smaller tents may be free-standing or attached to the ground, large tents are usually anchored using guy ropes tied to stakes or tent pegs...
ed camps scattered around
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of Africa, with a coastline on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. To the north lie Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland, while Lesotho is an independent country surrounded by South Africa.Modern...
. This was done as part of a
scorched earthA scorched earth policy is a military strategy or operational method which involves destroying anything that might be useful to the enemy while advancing through or withdrawing from an area...
policy to deny the
boerBoer is the Dutch word for farmer which came to denote the descendants of the proto Afrikaans-speaking pastoralists of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 18th century as well as those who left the Cape Colony during the 19th century to settle in the Orange Free State,...
guerrillas access to the supplies of food and clothing they needed to continue the war.
The camps were situated at
Aliwal NorthAliwal North is a town in central South Africa on the Orange River, Eastern Cape Province. Aliwal North is the seat of the Maletswai Local Municipality which falls within the Ukhahlamba District Municipality....
, Balmoral, Barberton, Belfast,
BethulieBethulie is a small sheep and cattle farming town in the Free State province of South Africa. The name meaning chosen by God was given by directors of a mission station in 1829 which the town formed around. The mission building is the oldest settler built building still standing in the Free State...
,
BloemfonteinBloemfontein is the capital city of the Free State Province of South Africa as well as one of the nation's three capitals, the judicial capital. The city's Sesotho name is Mangaung, meaning "place of cheetahs" and became part of the Mangaung Local Municipality in 2000...
,
BrandfortBrandfort is a small town in the Free State province of South Africa. Jacobus van Zijl, a Voortrekker elder, established a church on his farm Keerom in 1866. The community was visited by Orange Free State president Brand and, shortly afterwards, the town was named in his honour. The British built a...
, East London,
HeidelbergHeidelberg is a town with 70,707 inhabitants in the Gauteng province of South Africa at the foot of the Suikerbosrand next to the N3 highway, which connects Johannesburg and Durban.- History :...
,
HeilbronHeilbron is a small farming town in the Free State province of South Africa which services the cattle, dairy, sorgum, sunflower and maize industries. Raw stock beneficiation occurs in leisure foods, dairy products and stock feeds...
, Howick,
IreneIrene is a small township south of Pretoria, Gauteng, South Africa.-Prehistoric inhabitants:Stone arrowheads and tools, discovered in the Hennops River bed and dating back many years prove that people have been living in the area for a very long time.Though they left no historical writings of...
, Kimberley, Klerksdorp,
KroonstadKroonstad is the the third-largest town in the Free State province of South Africa, and lies two hours drive from Gauteng. It was established in 1855. In the 1991 census it had a population of 110,963....
, Krugersdorp, Merebank,
MiddelburgMiddelburg is a large farming and industrial town in the South African province of Mpumalanga.Middelburg was established as Nasareth, , in 1864 by the Voortrekkers on the banks of the Klein Olifants River. The name was changed in 1872 to Middelburg to mark its situation midway between the Transvaal...
, Norvalspont, Nylstroom,
PietermaritzburgPietermaritzburg is the capital and second largest city of the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. It was founded in 1838. Its "purist" Zulu name is umGungundlovu, as seen in the name of its municipality, although it is popularly called Maritzburg in English and Zulu alike, and abbreviated PMB...
, Pietersburg, Pinetown, Port Elizabeth, Potchefstroom,
SpringfonteinSpringfontein is a small mixed farming town in the Free State province of South Africa.The town was established in 1904 on the farm Hartleydale, which was part of the farm Springfontein. The name Springfontein, which is Afrikaans for "jumping spring", stems from the existence of a spring on the...
,
StandertonStanderton is a large commercial and agricultural town lying on the banks of the Vaal River in Mpumalanga, South Africa which specialises in cattle, dairy, maize and poultry farming. The town was established in 1876 and named after Boer leader Commadant AH Stander. During the Second Boer War a...
, Turffontein, Vereeniging,
VolksrustVolksrust is a town in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa on the KwaZulu-Natal provincial border. The town has important beef, dairy, maize, sorghum, wool and sunflower seed industries. It was established near to where the Battle of Majuba, wherein the Transvaal won its independence back...
,
VredefortVredefort is a small farming town in the Free State province of South Africa with cattle, peanuts, sorghum, sunflowers and maize being farmed. It is home to 3,000 residents....
, Vryburg and
WinburgWinburg is a small mixed farming town in the Free State province of South Africa.It is the oldest proclaimed town in the Orange Free State, South Africa and thus along with Griquatown, one of the oldest settlements in South Africa located north of the Orange River.Winburg is situated midway...
.
Though they were not officially used as extermination camps, the women and children of
BoerBoer is the Dutch word for farmer which came to denote the descendants of the proto Afrikaans-speaking pastoralists of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 18th century as well as those who left the Cape Colony during the 19th century to settle in the Orange Free State,...
men who were still fighting were given smaller rations than others thus causing mass starvation. The poor diet and inadequate
hygieneHygiene, refers to the set of practices associated with the preservation of health and healthy living. Hygiene is a concept related to medicine, as well as to personal and professional care practices related to most aspects of living, although it is most often associated with cleanliness and...
led to endemic contagious diseases such as
measlesMeasles is an infection of the respiratory system caused by a virus, specifically a paramyxovirus of the genus Morbillivirus. Morbilliviruses, like other paramyxoviruses, are enveloped, single-stranded, negative-sense RNA viruses...
, typhoid and
dysenteryDysentery is an inflammatory disorder of the intestine, especially of the colon, that results in severe diarrhea containing mucus and/or blood in the feces. If left untreated, dysentery can be fatal....
. Coupled with a shortage of medical facilities, this led to large numbers of deaths — a report after the war concluded that 27,927 Boer (of whom 22,074 were children under 16) and 14,154 black Africans had died of
starvationStarvation is a severe reduction in vitamin, nutrient, and energy intake. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage, and eventually death...
,
diseaseA disease or medical condition isan abnormal condition of an organism that impairs bodily functions, associated with specific symptoms and signs...
and
exposureExposure may refer to:* Publicity, an activity designed to rouse public interest* Outing, exposure of someone's secret sexual orientation* In climbing, the state of openness with relation to the distance of a fall -Biology:...
in the camps. In all, about 25% of the Boer inmates and 12% of the black African ones died (although recent research suggests that the black African deaths were underestimated and may have actually been around 20,000).
In contrast to these figures, only around 3,000
BoerBoer is the Dutch word for farmer which came to denote the descendants of the proto Afrikaans-speaking pastoralists of the eastern Cape frontier in Southern Africa during the 18th century as well as those who left the Cape Colony during the 19th century to settle in the Orange Free State,...
men were killed (in combat) during the
Second Boer WarThe Second Boer War , commonly referred to as The Boer War and also known as the South African War , the Anglo-Boer War and in Afrikaans as the Anglo-Boereoorlog or Tweede Vryheidsoorlog , or the Engelse oorlog was fought...
.
A delegate of the South African Women and Children's Distress Fund,
Emily HobhouseEmily Hobhouse was a British welfare campaigner, who is primarily remembered for bringing to the attention of the British public, and working to change, the appalling conditions inside the British concentration camps in South Africa built for Boer women and children during the Second Boer...
, did much to publicise the distress of the inmates on her return to Britain after visiting some of the camps in the
Orange Free StateThe Republic of the Orange Free State was an independent Boer republic in southern Africa during the second half of the 19th century, and later a British colony and a province of the Union of South Africa. It is the historical precursor to the present-day Free State province...
. Her fifteen-page report caused uproar, and led to a government commission, the
FawcettDame Millicent Garrett Fawcett GBE LLD was an English suffragist and an early feminist....
Commission, visiting camps from August to December 1901 which confirmed her report. They were highly critical of the running of the camps and made numerous recommendations, for example improvements in diet and provision of proper medical facilities. By February 1902 the annual death-rate dropped to 6.9% and eventually to 2%. Improvements made to the white camps were not as swiftly extended to the black camps.
Hobhouse'sEmily Hobhouse was a British welfare campaigner, who is primarily remembered for bringing to the attention of the British public, and working to change, the appalling conditions inside the British concentration camps in South Africa built for Boer women and children during the Second Boer...
pleas went mostly unheeded in the latter case.
Wales
During the 1910s, there was a concentration camp in
FrongochThe village of Frongoch is located in Gwynedd, Wales. It lies close to the market town of Bala, on the A4212 road in north Wales.It was the home of the Frongoch internment camp, used to hold German prisoners-of-war during First World War, and then Irish Republican prisoners from the 1916...
,
MerionethshireMerionethshire is one of thirteen historic counties of Wales, and a former administrative county.The administrative county of Merioneth, created under the Local Government Act 1888, was abolished under the Local Government Act 1972 on April 1, 1974...
. First
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
POWs, then
IrishIreland is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islets. To the east of Ireland, separated by the Irish Sea, is the island of Great Britain...
political prisoners were held there. The prisoners were very poorly treated and Frongoch became a breeding ground for Irish revolutionaries.
Namibia (German South-West Africa)
Between 1904 and 1908, following the German suppression of the
HereroThe Herero are a people belonging to the Bantu group, with about 240,000 members alive today. The majority live in Namibia, with the remainder living in Botswana and Angola. Most are employed as workers on large farms or earn their living as merchants or tradesmen in the cities...
and
NamaNama may mean:* NAMA_ or National_Asset_Management_Agency, Ireland's National Asset Management Agency* Nama , a genus of plants in the family Hydrophyllaceae* Holy Name in Indian religions...
in the
Herero and Namaqua genocideThe Herero and Namaqua Genocide occurred in German South-West Africa from 1904 until 1907, during the scramble for Africa. It is thought to be the first genocide of the 20th century. On January 12 1904, the Herero people under Samuel Maharero rose in rebellion against German colonial rule...
, survivors were interned in concentration camps.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/61/201.html This occurred when the country was a colony of Germany, not of the United Kingdom.
South Africa
During
World War IWorld War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
,
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country located at the southern tip of Africa, with a coastline on the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. To the north lie Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, to the east are Mozambique and Swaziland, while Lesotho is an independent country surrounded by South Africa.Modern...
n troops invaded neighboring
German South-West AfricaGerman South West Africa was a colony of Germany from 1884 until 1915, when it was taken over by South Africa and administered as South West Africa, finally becoming Namibia in 1990...
.
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
settlers were rounded up and sent to concentration camps in
PretoriaPretoria is a city located in the northern part of Gauteng Province, South Africa. It is one of the country's three capital cities, serving as the executive and de facto national capital; the others are Cape Town, the legislative capital, and Bloemfontein, the judicial capital.Pretoria is...
and later in
PietermaritzburgPietermaritzburg is the capital and second largest city of the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. It was founded in 1838. Its "purist" Zulu name is umGungundlovu, as seen in the name of its municipality, although it is popularly called Maritzburg in English and Zulu alike, and abbreviated PMB...
.
Indigenous People
The first large-scale confinement of a specific ethnic group in detention centers began in the summer of 1838, when President
Martin Van BurenMartin Van Buren was the eighth President of the United States from 1837 to 1841. Before his presidency, he served as the eighth Vice President and the 10th Secretary of State under Andrew Jackson...
ordered the U.S. Army to enforce the
Treaty of New EchotaThe Treaty of New Echota was a treaty signed on December 29, 1835 in New Echota, Georgia by officials of the United States government and representatives of a minority Cherokee political faction. The treaty was amended and ratified in March 1836. The treaty established terms under which the entire...
(an
Indian removalIndian Removal was a nineteenth century policy of the government of the United States to relocate Native American tribes living east of the Mississippi River to lands west of the river...
treaty) by rounding up the
CherokeeThe Cherokee are a Native American people from the Southeastern United States...
into prison camps before relocating them. Called "emigration depots," the three main ones were located at Ross's Landing (
Chattanooga, TennesseeChattanooga is the fourth-largest city in Tennessee , and the seat of Hamilton County. Located in southeastern Tennessee on Chickamauga Lake and Nickajack Lake, which are both part of the Tennessee River, Chattanooga lies approximately 120 miles to the northwest of Atlanta, Georgia, about 135...
),
Fort Payne, AlabamaFort Payne is a city in DeKalb County, Alabama, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 12,938. The city is the county seat of DeKalb County. It bills itself as the "Official Sock Capital of the World."...
, and
Fort CassFort Cass, established in 1835, was an important site during the Cherokee removal known as the Trail of Tears. Located on the Hiwassee River near present-day Charleston, Tennessee, it housed a garrison of United States troops and watched over the largest concentration of internment camps where...
(
Charleston, TennesseeCharleston is a city in Bradley County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 630 at the 2000 census. It is included in the Cleveland, Tennessee Metropolitan Statistical Area.-Geography:Charleston is located at...
). Fort Cass was the largest, with over 4,800 Cherokee prisoners held over the summer of 1838. Many died in these camps due to disease, which spread rapidly because of the close quarters and bad sanitary conditions: see the
Trail of TearsThe Trail of Tears was the relocation and movement of Native Americans in the United States from their homelands to Indian Territory in the Western United States. The phrase originated from a description of the removal of the Choctaw Nation in 1831...
.
Throughout the remainder of the
Indian WarsIndian Wars is the name used in the United States to describe a series of conflicts between the colonial or federal government and the native people of North America....
, various populations of Native Americans were rounded up, trekked across country and put into detention, some for as long as 2 years.
Philippines
On December 7, 1901, during the
Philippine-American WarThe Philippine–American War, sometimes known as the Philippine War of Independence was an armed military conflict between the Philippines and the United States, which arose from the struggle of the insurgent First Philippine Republic against United States annexation of the islands...
, General
J. Franklin BellJames Franklin Bell was Chief of Staff of the United States Army from 1906 to 1910.Bell was a major-general in the Regular United States Army, commanding the Department of the East, with headquarters at Governors Island, New York at the time of his death in 1919...
began a concentration camp policy in
BatangasBatangas is one of the most popular tourist destinations near Metro Manila. The province has many beaches and famous for excellent diving spots only a few hours away from Manila...
--everything outside the "dead lines" was systematically destroyed: humans, crops, domestic animals, houses, and boats. A similar policy had been quietly initiated on the island of
MarinduqueMarinduque is an island province of the Philippines located in the MIMAROPA region in Luzon. Its capital is Boac. Marinduque lies between Tayabas Bay to the north and Sibuyan Sea to the south...
some months before.
Japanese-, German- and Italian-Americans
In reaction to the bombing of
Pearl HarborPearl Harbor is a harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet...
by
Japanis an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
in 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt under
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Executive Order 9066United States Executive Order 9066 was a presidential executive order issued during World War II by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on February 19, 1942 to send Japanese Americans to internment camps....
on February 19, 1942 allowed military commanders to designate areas "from which any or all persons may be excluded." Under this order all Japanese and
Americans of Japanese ancestryare Americans of Japanese heritage, either born in Japan or their descendents. Japanese Americans have historically been among the three largest Asian American communities, but in recent decades have become the sixth largest group at roughly 1,204,205, including those of mixed-race or...
were removed from Western coastal regions to guarded camps in
ArkansasArkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquin name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares a border with six states, with its eastern border largely defined by the Mississippi River. Its diverse geography ranges from the mountainous regions of the...
,
OregonOregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
,
WashingtonWashington is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Washington was carved out of the western part of Washington Territory which had been ceded by Britain in 1846 by the Oregon Treaty as settlement of the Oregon Boundary Dispute. It was admitted to the Union as the...
,
WyomingWyoming is a state in the Western United States. The majority of the state is dominated by the mountain ranges and rangelands of the Rocky Mountain West, while the easternmost section of the state includes part of a high elevation prairie region known as the High Plains. While the tenth largest...
,
ColoradoColorado is a U.S. state located in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States of America. It may also be considered to be part of the Western and Southwestern regions of the United States. Colorado entered statehood in 1876 and was nicknamed the “Centennial State”...
and
ArizonaThe State of Arizona is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. The capital and largest city is Phoenix. The second largest city is Tucson, followed in size by the four Phoenix metropolitan area cities of Mesa, Glendale, Chandler, and Scottsdale.Arizona was the 48th and...
;
GermanGerman Americans are Americans of German descent. They form the largest self-reported ancestry group in the United States, outnumbering the Irish and English. They account for 50 million people, or 17% of the U.S. population...
and
ItalianAn Italian American is an American of Italian ancestry, and/or may also refer to someone possessing Italian/American dual citizenship. Italian Americans are the fourth largest European ethnic group in the United States.-History:...
citizens, permanent residents, and American citizens of those respective ancestries (and American citizen family members) were removed from (among other places) the West and
East CoastThe East Coast of the United States, also known as the "Eastern Seaboard" or "Atlantic Seaboard", refers to the easternmost coastal states in the central and northern United States, which touch the Atlantic Ocean and stretch up to Canada...
and relocated or interned, and roughly one-third of the US was declared an exclusionary zone.
OklahomaOklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,617,316 residents in 2007 and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
housed German and Italian POW's at Fort Reno, located near El Reno, and at Camp Gruber, near Braggs, Oklahoma.
Almost 120,000 Japanese Americans and resident Japanese aliens would eventually be removed from their homes and relocated.
About 2,200 Japanese living in South America (mostly in Peru) were transported to the United States and placed in internment camps.
Approximately 5,000 Germans living in several Latin American republics were also removed and transported to the United States and placed in internment camps. In addition at least 10,905 German Americans were held in more than 50 internment sites throughout the United States and Hawaii.
Alaska NativesAlaska Natives are the indigenous peoples of Alaska. They include: Inupiat, Yupik, Aleut, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Eyak, and a number of Northern Athabaskan cultures.-History:In 1912 the Alaska Native Brotherhood was founded...
living in the
Aleutian IslandsThe Aleutian Islands are a chain of more than 300 small volcanic islands forming part of the Aleutian Arc in the Northern Pacific Ocean, occupying an area of 6,821 sq mi and extending about westward from the Alaska Peninsula toward the Kamchatka Peninsula...
were also interned during the war;
Funter BayFunter Bay is a two-mile-long bay on the western side of Admiralty Island near its northern tip, in the Alexander Archipelago of the U.S. state of Alaska. It lies within the Hoonah-Angoon Census Area, in the Unorganized Borough of Alaska....
was one such camp.