Lost River Camps

What would you say is a general definition of concentration camps?

We've been researching the Holocaust at school. I know a lot about the concentration camps and the conditions there but i can't summarise it can anyone help?

Public Comments

1. extermination camps. or killing fields. the nazis simply called it "nacht und nebel"- the "Night and Fog" into which all the "undesirables" were vanishing
2. Historically concentration camps have been used by different governments at different times, (before and after WWII), to "concentrate" certain groups of people deemed a threat to that government or its society. Usually this has been a temporary measure that allowed the government time to figure out exactly what individuals in that group were genuine threats and exactly how they were going to deal w/ them. It was only in Hitler's Germany that concentration camp came to mean what it did: A place to keep the country's "undesirables" until they could be exterminated and their remains disposed of. It takes a LONG time to kill 7+ million people. FYI: Although the Jews were the main target of Hitler's "Final Solution" they were by no means the only ones; Others included "mentally deficient" people, Gypsies, political dissidents, communists, homosexuals and eastern Europeans of various ethnicity's.