Talk:Concentration camp

On the term "concentration camp"

I started working today on an article about a German filmmaker Nina Gladitz. Gladitz was a critic of fellow German Leni Riefenstahl, for glorifying the Nazi Party and Nazi ideology. While doing so I came across a pretty big problem. Our coverage of Auschwitz calls it a Nazi concentration camps. There is a general misconception that "Concentration camp" is synonymous with "Nazi death camp".

I am not a historian, but there is a historian who seems to be recognized as a leading expert on the history of the concentration camp - Andrea Pitzer. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called the border camps where refugee families had their children stripped from them "concentration camps". She referred to Pitzer's work. I bought Pitzer's book. She documented that the term "concentration camp" was first used in the late 19th century - by the Spanish IIRC. The UK used this term for camps full of Boer civilians, during the Boer War. Both sides used this term for camps were they held citizens of the opposite side, during WW1.

Pitzer documented that the term had always merely meant a camp where authorities held individuals without charge, citing some kind of threat to national security.

I think neither the wikipedia or citizendium should perpetuate the misconception that "Concentration camp" is synonymous with "Nazi death camp". I think Auschwitz should be referred to as a Nazi death camp. The Nazis operated camps whose primary purpose was to kill those taken to it. They also operated labor camps, where the primary purpose was to employ prisoners as slave labour, working them for brutally long hours, while feeding them starvation rations, and supplying them with inadequate and unsanitary barracks, with the result that they were worked to death. Should those camps, where many prisoners died through being worked to death, have a separate article from the article on Nazi death camps?

This is controversial. Nazi concentration camps are controversial. Death camps are controversial. Removing the widely held but incorrect notion that "Concentration camp" is synonymous with "Nazi death camp" would be controversial.

So, I won't start without the agreement of some other people here. I am going to explicitly ping Pat and Peter. George Swan (talk) 21:04, 22 July 2022 (CDT)

I agree. And, yes, it was the Spanish, in Cuba. It was actually, relatively speaking, a humanitarian measure. The traditional, and still common, practice when faced with fighters hiding among, or disguised as, civilians, is just to massacre the civilians.

This sort of McCarthyism is quite common. See Holocaust denial for another case where different concepts are slurred together. And then there's "hate speech" which has at least three different meanings. Etc. Peter Jackson (talk) 05:37, 23 July 2022 (CDT)

I agree too. How about we copy/move this to the Discussion page of "Concentration camp", where it will be easily found in future? I will do it and leave a notice behind here. Pat Palmer (talk) 06:01, 23 July 2022 (CDT)

I realized afterwards that my remark above is doing the same thing it's criticizing others for: it slurs the distinction between those who deliberately slur distinctions in order to smear people and those who're just being muddle-headed. (Not always easy to tell which are which.) Peter Jackson (talk) 04:50, 25 July 2022 (CDT)