concentration camp

[kon-suhn-trey-shuhn kamp]

noun

1. a guarded compound for the mass detention without hearings or the imprisonment without trial of civilians, as refugees, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc.

2. a Nazi prison camp or death camp prior to and during World War II.

concentration camp

noun

1. a guarded prison camp in which nonmilitary prisoners are held, esp one of those in Nazi Germany in which millions were exterminated

concentration camp

1. A place for assembling and confining political prisoners and enemies of a nation. Concentration camps are particularly associated with the rule of the Nazis in Germany, who used them to confine millions of Jews (see also Jews) as a group to be purged from the German nation. Communists, Gypsies, homosexuals, and other persons considered undesirable according to Nazi principles, or who opposed the government, were also placed in concentration camps and eventually executed in large groups. (See Holocaust.)

Word History and Origins

Origin of concentration camp¹

First recorded in 1900–05, applied originally to camps where noncombatants were placed during the Boer War

Example Sentences

There are only a handful of genuine photos from inside the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War Two.

From BBC

One Florida State representative told Salon that the center was “modern concentration camp, plain and simple,” in July.

From Salon

Their father, who was among the troops who liberated the Ohrdruf concentration camp in Germany in 1945, taught his sons that such crimes against humanity are not to be forgotten, whitewashed or ignored.

From Los Angeles Times

Several states are developing similar concentration camps, including one at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, and an Indiana facility dubbed “The Speedway Slammer.”

From Salon

One by one, men and boys were being loaded into the buses and taken away from the town in northwestern Bosnia and Herzegovnia to concentration camps.

From Salon

Related Words

• gas chamber 
• gulag 
• internment camp 
• prison camp