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'''Concentration campcamps'''s were are camps set up for persons deemed to be opponents or threats to a government. They were most notoriously used by [[National Socialist Germany]], in the [[Soviet Union|Soviet Russia]], World War Two era [[United States]] and British controlled [[Nazi GermanySouth Africa]] set up for persons deemed to be opponents or threats to . They are currently being used today by [[China]] against the regimeUighurs. The term "concentration camp " was coined by Soviet Communist Party General Secreary [[Vladimir Lenin]] in a letter of 9 August 1918 letter in which he statestated,{{Cquote|It is essential to organise a reinforced guard of reliable persons to carry out mass terror against [[kulaks]], priests and White Guardists; unreliable elements should be locked up in a concentration camp outside the town" <ref>Geoffrey Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union, 1992, p. 71.</ref>}}

{{Cquote|It is essential to organise a reinforced guard ==Background==The first concentration camps in modern times were implemented in Cuba in 1896 under the command of reliable persons to carry out mass terror against [[kulaks]]Spanish General Valeriano Weyler, priests and White Guardists; unreliable elements should be locked up in a concentration camp outside during the town" war with Cuba.<ref>Geoffrey Hosking, A History of the Soviet Union, 1992, p[https://www. 71pbs. org/crucible/tl4.html February, 1896: Reconcentration Policy]</ref>}}

The In peacetime, the [[Soviet Union]] created the world's first concentration camp system with anetwork of prisons and labor campsintended for use on its own people. <ref>Dmitri Volkogonov, ''Trotsky: The Eternal Revolutionary'', Translation by Harold Shukman, The Free PRess, New York, 1996.</ref> Adolf Hitler, in responding to a question from a German industrial as to how he planned to deal with unemployment prior to assuiming assuming power in [[Nazi Germany]], responded , "concentration Concentration camps". <ref>Gunther, John, ''Inside Europe'', New York: Harper, 1939.</ref> The Soviet [[Gulag ]] system was copied in Nazi National Socialist Germany, and raised to profound horrors never before thought imaginable: death factories.[[Auschwitz]], for example, achieved [[murder]] on an industrial scale. During [[World War II]], 1.5 million people were systematically starved, [[torture]]d , and murdered there.<ref>http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/31</ref> Although [[Hitler]] was primarily focused on the extermination of the [[Jews]], ; [[Christian]]s, [[Gypsy|gypsies]], [[Slavs]], [[homosexuals]], and [[Communism|communists]] also met with similar fates in the Nazi National Socialist camps. Famous National Socialist concentration camps include [[Auschwitz]], [[Bergen-Belsen]], [[Buchenwald]] and [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]].

The Soviet gulags were forced labour camps, mainly in the remote regions of [[Siberia]] and the Far North. By 1934, the gulags held several million inmates (political prisoners and ordinary criminals alike) and the Soviet economy was dependent upon this vast pool of [[slave]] labour from the [[lumpen masses]] and [[counterrevolutionaries]]. An April 14, 1941 Memorandum from the U.S. Military Attache (G-2) in Moscow, found in the [[Harry Hopkins]] Papers at the FDR Library, entitled "[[NKVD]] of the USSR", it states in part,{{Cquote|"Although the Soviets disclaim [[forced labor]] in this country, the organization of this commissariat is interesting to note. In it are the means to apprehend (militia), try and sentence (advisory council) and imprison offenders ([[Gulag|corrective labor]]). Any governmental organization that has a crying need for labor simply calls upon the NKVD to supply it. If the amount of labor is insufficient to supply the need, it is relatively an easy matter to institute a [[reign of terror]] on any pretext and fill up [[labor colonies]] to meet requirements....Its close supervision over the people, its [[pogroms]], its raids and arrests, has instilled fear...[http<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20040423034159/www.cia.gov/csi/books/venona/5d.gif] }}</ref>

{{Cquote|"The NKVD has every individual under observation from birth to death...its secret agents are everywhere; its actions are swift. An individual simply [[Nacht und Nebel|disappears in the middle of the night]] and no one ever sees or hears of him again. ...When Stalin needs scapegoats to cover government mistakes he unleashes his NKVD...The Soviet Union is in itself a prison and the NKVD and State Security are its keepers. [http<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/20051208125448/www.cia.gov/csi/books/venona/5e.gif] </ref> }}

Conditions were brutal: prisoners received insufficient food and clothing to cope with the long working hours and severe weather, resulting in high death rates from exhaustion and disease. <ref>http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/archives/gula.html</ref>

The Bosnian Serbs ==See also maintained concentration camps at Omarska for Bosnian Muslims during the Yugoslavian civil wars == *[[Atheism and slavery]]*[[Essay: KAL 007 Survivors and Gulags of the 1990s. (see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1633582.stm)Russia]]

*Gregory L. Freeze, ed, ''Russia: A History'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. &nbsp;253.

[[Category:HistoryWorld War II]][[Category:Genocide]][[Category:National Socialist Concentration Camps]]