death camp

noun

1. a concentration camp in which the inmates are unlikely to survive or to which they have been sent to be executed.

death camp

noun

1. a concentration camp in which the conditions are so brutal that few prisoners survive, or one to which prisoners are sent for execution

Word History and Origins

Origin of death camp¹

First recorded in 1940–45

Example Sentences

Those aspirations were made more urgent in the early 1940s by revelations of the Nazi death camps.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Evangelicals view Israel through the prism of a celebrated tradition of Christians who opposed the Nazis and rescued Jews from Hitler’s death camps.

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At the same time, the concentration camp is a modern global phenomenon with its own ironic history, which long precedes the Nazi death camps.

Read more on Salon

Other camps further east, like the death camps of Treblinka, Sobibor and Auschwitz, had either been destroyed by the Germans to hide their crimes in the face of Soviet advances or emptied of their inmates.

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Ernest Salomon of Santa Barbara, almost 90, said he and some of his immediate family escaped German death camps while other relatives perished.

Read more on Los Angeles Times