concentration camp

noun

: a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard

—used especially in reference to camps created by the Nazis in World War II for the internment and persecution of Jews and other prisoners

The Nazi soldiers hauled [Mordechai] Strigler off to a concentration camp, and carved swastikas into his cheeks and forehead with a razor blade. Over the next five years, he was sent from one concentration camp or slave-labor camp to another.

—David Remnick

She ended up dying in a concentration camp, just a few months before she would have been liberated.

—Marilyn Reynolds

The V2 killed thousands of British civilians while 20,000 concentration camp inmates died as slave labourers during its manufacture in the closing stages of the second world war.

—Anna Tomforde et al.

see also death camp

Examples of concentration camp in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Reinhold Kulle was an SS member in the elite Death’s Head division and a guard at Gross-Rosen concentration camp. —Cheri Lucas Rowlands, Longreads, 11 Sep. 2024

Watch on Max The Zone of Interest In 1943, Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) was the commandant of Auschwitz who spent his days playing god with the lives of the concentration camp’s innocent prisoners. —Jennifer M. Wood, WIRED, 29 Oct. 2024

The Hidden Book, by Kirsty Manning Kirsty Manning’s compassionate novel is inspired by a real World War II covert mission in 1940s Austria to smuggle out photographic evidence of the treatment of prisoners at Mauthausen concentration camp. —Staff, The Christian Science Monitor, 15 Aug. 2024

Other posts from Pascal cited in the lawsuit include one of him comparing the United States response to those entering the country illegally to Germany’s concentration camps. —Winston Cho, The Hollywood Reporter, 30 July 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1901, in the meaning defined above

Kids Definition

concentration camp

noun

: a camp where persons (as prisoners of war, political prisoners, or refugees) are detained