concentration camp

noun
1.
a guarded compound for the detention or imprisonment of aliens, members of ethnic minorities, political opponents, etc., especially any of the camps established by the Nazis prior to and during World War II for the confinement and persecution of prisoners.
Origin
1900-05, applied orig. to camps where noncombatants were placed during the Boer War
Examples from the web for concentration camps
  • We've actually built concentration camps for cows and chickens who live only to be killed and it structures their entire lives.
  • Some were rounded up and shot in their own villages, while others were shipped off to concentration camps.
  • The cap is vaguely suggestive of prisoner attire in concentration camps.
  • The uncovering of the concentration camps added to his emotion.
  • The survivors of the concentration camps are now elderly and many are feeble.
British Dictionary definitions for concentration camps

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
Word Origin and History for concentration camps

concentration camp

n.

1901, "compound for noncombatants in a war zone" (see concentration); a controversial idea from the second Boer War (1899-1902), and the term emerged with a bad odor. In reference to prisons for dissidents and minorities in Nazi Germany from 1934, in Soviet Russia from 1935.

concentration camps in Culture

concentration camp definition


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 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.)