Modern concentration camps begin to appear in the late 19th century. During the Spanish-American War (1898) the Spaniards began to use them in Cuba and then during the Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa, the British established them for thousands of women and children. Western concentration camps have often been created during periods of war and national emergency.
In Russia it was the Bolsheviks who first established concentration camps for suspected counterrevolutionaries in 1918. These camps continued to be used for all “class enemies” arrested by the secret police (originally known as the CHEKA then later other names). The millions of inmates in these camps were forced to work on numerous projects that were essential for the Soviet economy. E.g. canal building/maintenance and mining.
The most well known concentration camps existed in Nazi Germany from 1933, almost immediately after the Nazis were elected. The Nazis gained power on January 30th 1933 and the following February issued a decree removing the constitutional protection against arbitrary arrest. The security police had the authority to arrest anyone and follow up the arrest by sending that person to a camp for an indefinite period of time.
The political police, called the Gestapo, imposed ‘protective custody’ on a wide variety of political opponents, which included communists, socialists, religious dissenters, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Jews.
The criminal police, called the Kripo, imposed ‘preventive arrest’ on professional criminals and other groups like gypsies, homosexuals and prostitutes.
The camps in Germany were operated by the Schutzstaffel (SS) with brutal military discipline. During the 1930’s there were six major camps established, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Flossenbürg, Mauthausen and Ravensbrück for women. In 1939 these camps held roughly 25,000 prisoners.
During World War II the camps grew in size and number with large new ones being established like Auschwitz-Birkenau, Natzweiler, Neuengamme, Gross-Rosen and many more. Millions of new prisoners entered these camps from every occupied European country, many of whom were Jews, partisans, Soviet prisoners of war and impressed foreign labourers. In early 1942 the Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt assumed operational control of the camps and exploited inmates as forced labourers in industrial production. Subsidiary camps were also operated and all camps often worked prisoners to death. Those whom were no longer able to work were killed by gassing, shooting or fatal injection. Some prisoners were even subject to “medical experiments” as the Nazis called them. Camp population exceeded 700,000 in early 1945.
Also, during World War II extermination centres were established by the Nazis, either within concentration camps or in newly built centres, to kill entire populations. More than 6 million people perished in Nazi camps, of which the majority were Jews.
Since World War II many repressive regimes have established concentration camps to detain vast numbers of people. For example; in Kenya during the 1950’s the British established emergency detention camps; the Indonesian Government in the 1960’s sent opponents to island camps; and the military regime in Argentina during the 1970’s secretly operated detention camps.
