Published: | Updated:

WHO'S RIGHT ABOUT CONCENTRATION CAMPS?

Republicans and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are at war over whether calling facilities being built to house new arrivals at the Mexican border 'concentration camps' is demeaning the victims of the Holocaust.

The term predates the Holocaust by decades, first creeping into the English language from the 'reconcentrados' set up by Spanish troops in Cuba in the late 1890s to put rural civilians on the borders of towns.

But it was British use of concentration camps in the Boer War of 1899 to 1902 in what is now South Africa which made the term widely used. 

The idea was to put Boer civilians in camps to stop them supplying guerrillas fighting British colonial troops. 

The reality was that thousands died of disease and malnutrition and Britain's opposition leader accused the government of a policy of exterminating the Boers. 

German colonial troops in modern Namibia adopted the camps, and their name, before World War One as part of a genocide campaign against rebels.

The rise of Hitler saw the Nazis establish concentration camps for the people they rounded up. The first was Dachau, in March 1933, for Communists and other enemies. Jews quickly became the official enemy.

The number of camps exploded in Germany and then from 1939 the regime spread them across the countries they invaded.

Prisoners lived in appalling conditions, were used as slave labor, starved, subject to disease and used as human guinea pigs.

The names were to enter infamy: Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, and many others. 

In 1942, the SS set up a network of extermination camps - Vernichtungslager - across Nazi-held territory. They were built beside existing concentration camps with new arrivals sent to one or the other; Auschwitz was to become the most infamous.   

So technically, Ocasio-Cortez is right that concentration camp does not mean the same as the most notorious of the extermination camps but it is a fine distinction - the term concentration camp has become inextricably linked with the Holocaust and even before then was linked to accusations of extermination policies.

Advertisement

Read articles that feature this panel

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Republicans in war of words after she accuses Trump of building 'concentration camps' at the border as they say...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in a war of words after she accused Trump of building 'concentration camps' at the border - and Republicans ...

I will NEVER apologize for saying Trump is building 'concentration camps' on the Mexican border says AOC after Republicans step up attacks...

Ocasio-Cortez doubled down on her charge of 'concentration camps' on the border while Speaker Pelosi gave her political cover, saying the...

'I was in two American concentration camps': George Takei talks about time at Japanese internment camp aged 5 and says outrage at AOC's...

George Takei, 82, tweeted on Thursday: 'It is sad that there is so much outrage vented toward [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and [Taylor Swift]...

Most watched News videos