concentration camp

American  

[kon-suhn-trey-shuhn kamp] / ˌkɒn sənˈtreɪ ʃən ˌkæmp /

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.

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concentration camp British  

noun

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

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concentration camp Cultural  

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.)

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Etymology

Origin of concentration camp

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

Compare meaning

How does concentration-camp compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

• concentration camp vs. death camp
• gulag vs. concentration camp

Example Sentences

His father, Sidney A. Olson, was a journalist for Time magazine who in April 1945 reported on the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp in Germany and later became an advertising executive.

From The Wall Street Journal

He was fascinated in particular by satellite photos of alleged concentration camps in Xinjiang, and he decided to see for himself.

From The Wall Street Journal

Appropriately, Veiel foregrounds the unavoidable truth: Extras in her movies ended up at concentration camps, something she lied about.

From Los Angeles Times

He later learned from relatives that all four of his grandparents had been Jewish, and that they had died in Nazi concentration camps.

From BBC

Stoppard was not fully aware of his Jewish heritage until the 1990s, when a Czech relative told him all four of his grandparents and three aunts had been killed in Nazi concentration camps.

From Barron's

Related Words

• gas chamber
• gulag
• internment camp
• prison camp