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

Within a concentration camp, would someone make a joke about the number, the tattooed number?

From The Daily Beast

She described the influence of her mother, a concentration camp survivor.

From The Daily Beast

When Norman Manea was five years old, he was shipped to a concentration camp in Transnistria, Ukraine.

From The Daily Beast

Camp Liberty was “a concentration camp” and “an extermination camp,” he said.

From The Daily Beast

After a while, it becomes clear that this was his adolescent attempt to imagine what it was like to be in a concentration camp.

From The Daily Beast

We were only thirty miles from the concentration camp at Dachau, but we knew nothing about it at this time.

From Project Gutenberg

Some seven hundred and fifty died while in this concentration camp.

From Project Gutenberg

The pallor and gauntness of the concentration camp lay upon him, but his race was used to oppression.

From Project Gutenberg

The bloodboltered shambles in act five is a forecast of the concentration camp sung by Mr Swinburne.

From Project Gutenberg

This was the concentration camp whence brigades were despatched for a spell of trench-digging and guard duty at the outpost line.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• gas chamber
• gulag
• internment camp
• prison camp