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

Though fictional, the film follows a heartbreakingly familiar story for many immigrant modernist architects: Having survived the Nazi concentration camps, celebrated Jewish architect László Toth (Adrien Brody) escapes persecution in postwar Europe to begin his life and career again in Philadelphia. —Elizabeth Fazzare, Architectural Digest, 20 Dec. 2024

The camp was also used to train members of the SS, the paramilitary organization of Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich that ran other concentration camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka in Poland. —Hannah Peart, NBC News, 6 Dec. 2024

This is particularly the case with visitors to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Oświęcim, Poland, which stands on the former site of the World War II concentration camp, and which has become a dark tourism destination. —Jennifer Stavros, WIRED, 31 Oct. 2024

That Eisenberg is savvy enough to abruptly end a sequence at the Majdanek concentration camp on a sudden gasp, then cut to an aftermath of quiet sobbing, is anything but expected. —David Fear, Rolling Stone, 29 Oct. 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