Internment

Internment camp for Japanese in Canada during World War II

Internment is the imprisonment or confinement^[1] of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) gives the meaning as "The action of ‘interning’; confinement within the limits of a country or place". Most modern usage is about individuals, and there is a distinction between internment, which is being confined usually for preventative or political reasons, and imprisonment, which is being closely confined as a punishment for crime.

"Internment" also refers to the practice of neutral countries in time of war in detaining belligerent armed forces and equipment in their territories under the Second Hague Convention^[2].

Early civilizations such as the Assyrians used forced resettlement of populations as a means of controlling territory^[3], but it was not until much later in the late 19th and the 20th centuries that records exist of groups of civilian non-combatants being concentrated into large prison camps.

Internment camps

An internment camp is a large detention center created for political opponents, enemy aliens, people with mental illness, specific ethnic or religious groups, civilians of a critical war-zone, or other groups of people, usually during a war. The term is used for facilities where inmates selected according to some specific criteria, rather than individuals who are incarcerated after due process of law fairly applied by a judiciary.

As a result of the mistreatment of civilians interned during recent conflicts, the Fourth Geneva Convention was established in 1949 to provide for the protection of civilians during times of war "in the hands" of an enemy and under any occupation by a foreign power^[4]. It was ratified by 194 nations. Prisoner-of-war camps are internment camps intended specifically for holding members of an enemy's armed forces as defined in the Third Geneva Convention, and the treatment of whom is specified in that Convention.

Concentration camps

Boer women and children in a British run concentration camp in South Africa.

The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. defines concentration camp as: a camp where non-combatants of a district are accommodated, such as those instituted by Lord Kitchener during the South African war of 1899-1902; one for the internment of political prisoners, foreign nationals, etc., esp. as organized by the Nazi regime in Germany before and during the war of 1939-45.

Similar camps existed earlier (such as the US Concentration Camps forced on Cherokee and other Native Americans in the 1830s, Cuba (1868–78), the Philippines (1898–1901) by the Spaniards and Americans respectively^[5]), the English term "concentration camp" was first used to describe camps operated by the British in South Africa during the 1899-1902 Second Boer War^[6]. Purportedly conceived as a form of humanitarian aid to the families whose farms had been destroyed in the fighting, the camps were used to confine and control large numbers of civilians as part of a scorched earth tactic.

At the time that Kitchener started the concentration camps in South Africa the war had entered the guerilla phase and set battles during which farms could be destroyed no longer happened. By destroying crops, livestock and farmsteads under the 'Scorched Earth' policy the Boer fighters were deprived of supplies and shelter.It also left the women and children on such farms destitute and they were forcibly removed, against their will, to the camps where thousands died of disease and starvation.

Use of the word concentration comes from the idea of concentrating a group of people who are in some way undesirable in one place, where they can be watched by those who incarcerated them. For example, in a time of insurgency, potential supporters of the insurgents are placed where they cannot provide them with supplies or information.

Later in the 20th century, the arbitrary internment of civilians by the state became more common. The Soviet Union set up the Gulag, a system of forced labor camps that interned ordinary criminals as well as political prisoners.^[7]. Most famously, Nazi Germany set up a system of extermination camps as part of the Holocaust, and officially named them "concentration camps."

Nazi camps

Buchenwald concentration camp

The term concentration camp lost some of its original meaning after Nazi concentration camps were discovered, and has ever since been understood to refer to a place of mistreatment, starvation, forced labour, and murder. The expression since then has only been used in this extremely pejorative sense; no government or organization has used it to describe its own facilities, using instead terms such as internment camp, resettlement camp, detention facility, etc, regardless of the actual circumstances of the camp, which can vary a great deal.

As a result of this, the term "concentration camp" carries many of the connotations of "extermination camp" and is sometimes used synonymously. A concentration camp, however, is not by definition a death-camp. For example, many of the slave labor camps were used as cheap or free sources of factory labor for the manufacture of war materials and other goods.

Indeed, in terming their camps "concentration camps," the Nazis were using a mundane term to mask something far more horrific than the word had previously meant, similar to their usage of the term 'Ghetto.' Previously, ghettos had been separate, usually walled-in Jewish Quarters designed to segregate Jews from outside society and "protect" them from their neighbors. The Ghettos in occupied Europe were far more brutal, however. After the war some of the German built concentration camps remained in operation. Some camps in Poland were used for extracting Forced labor from ethnic German civilians prior to their expulsion. Camps included camps in Poland such as those run by Salomon Morel and Czesław Gęborski. For example Central Labour Camp Jaworzno, Central Labour Camp Potulice, Łambinowice, Zgoda labour camp and others.[1]

Internment in Britain in 1939 and 1940

More than 75,000 refugees from Nazism came to Britain during the 1930s. At the outbreak of war on 3 September 1939, Germans, Austrians and Italians living in Britain were classified as enemy aliens and as such were required to appear before a Tribunal to assess their security risk to the country. Most were categorized as ‘friendly enemy aliens’ and had to report regularly to the local police. Many had already volunteered for the British Forces and waited for their call-up papers. At the end of 1939, they were permitted to enlist into the only unit open to enemy aliens at that time: the non-combatant Pioneer Corps.

Meanwhile during May/June 1940, around 30,000 ‘enemy alien’ who had not already enlisted in the British Forces were interned in Churchill’s policy “collar the lot”. Men and women were arrested from their homes and places of work and interned behind barbed wire. They were sent to camps around the country, with the majority interned on the Isle of Man and at Huyton near Liverpool.

Around 2,000 men were shipped to Australia on the infamous troopship Dunera and also to Canada. They remained in internment for several months, or even up to a year in the case of the internees in Australia. One of the ways to secure an early release from internment was to volunteer for the British Army. Thousands of men chose to do so and were drafted into the Pioneer Corps. The training centre at Westward Ho! could no longer accommodate the thousands of men who were enlisting from internment, so it was moved to Ilfracombe where the men were billeted in requisitioned hotels.

In 1940 many were interned during the Invasion Scare, the wartime government being fearful of Fifth Columnists who might be seeking to betray the country from within. Perverse it may have been to imprison people who had themselves fled Hitler, but it reflected the concerns of the day. Fortunately most Germans and Austrians were forgiving and had an understanding of this. Once the authorities had realised that there was a distinction to be made between enemy aliens who were a danger to national security, and those who had actually fled Nazi tyranny, opportunities to serve in the forces opened up, and this is where their contribution to Allied Victory began to take shape.

Continued use

Although the term "concentration camp" has become virtually indistinguishable from "death camp" in the popular mind, the two are not identical. The British continued to use the term concentration camp in its original meaning long after the collapse of the Third Reich, with quite possibly the last being the forced but relatively peaceful relocation of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Chinese squatters from the edge of the Malayan Jungle to "New Villages" during the Malayan Emergency to choke supply and support off for the Malayan Communist Party.

List of camps

Main article: List of concentration and internment camps

See also

• Civilian Internee
• List of concentration and internment camps
• Prisoner-of-war camp
• Extermination camp
• Labor camps
• Quasi-criminal
• Refugees from Nazism

References