concentration camp

plural concentration camps

1. A camp where troops are assembled, prior to combat or transport.

   1930, Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life, Chapter XIV The 21st Lancers… …journey forward by nine days' march to the advanced concentration camp just north of the Shabluka Cataract.

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   A concentration camp is a place, near the scene of intended operations or near an embarkation point, where troops are assembled for immediate use against the enemy or for transport to an over-sea theater of operations.

   1913, General Staff Corps, Field Service Regulations, United States Army - Page 223

2. A camp where large numbers of people, especially political prisoners, prisoners of war, refugees etc., are detained for the purpose of confining them in one place, typically with inadequate or inhumane facilities.First known use 19th c.

   All Cubans (men, women, and children) were ordered to move into garrisoned Spanish towns or concentration camps.

   1927, Charles E. Chapman, A History of the Cuban Republic, IV.81

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   The state of the proletarian dictatorship is depicted by Trotsky as a huge permanent concentration camp in which the government exercises absolute power over every aspect of the citizens' lives and in particular decides how much work they shall do, of what kind and in what places.

   1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume II: The Golden Age, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: rozwój (in Polish), →ISBN, →OCLC, page 512

   In 1945, overseen by Alfred Hitchcock, a crack team of British film-makers went to Germany to document the horror of the concentration camps.

   2015 January 9, The Guardian

   What we should be doing with China is understanding they are a superpower, they are a strong economy. We want to be working with them. We certainly don't want a Cold War. But we should be speaking out against human rights abuses. When you put into concentration camps, you know, or at least lock up, I don't know, a million Muslims there, somebody's got to speak out about that.

   2019, Bernie Sanders, Full interview: Bernie Sanders meets with the Register's editorial board (12.6.19)DesMoines Register, 6 December, at 37:13

3. figurativelyA situation of overcrowding and extremely harsh conditions.First known use 20th c.

   The UN inspector stated that the Australian government's migrant detention facilities were in effect concentration camps.