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

The son of a Jewish fur trader who died in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II, as a lawyer Badinter built a reputation defending clients his peers wouldn't touch.

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After the exhibition’s stark presentation on Jewish ghettos, Nazi killing squads and concentration camps, the class photo reappears.

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The Germans forced survivors into concentration camps, seizing their lands for the state and selling vast tracts to white settlers at heavily subsidized rates, according to historians and researchers.

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Sheinbaum evoked the Holocaust, saying “many of my relatives ... were exterminated in concentration camps.”

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She once used a concentration camp’s children as movie extras, then denied knowing they were later taken away by train and killed.

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Related Words

• gas chamber 
• gulag 
• internment camp 
• prison camp