In the 20th century millions of people were confined to concentration camps, primarily in Germany and the former Soviet Union, not for what they did but simply because of who they were. Concentration camps are not prisons where people are kept because they have been legally convicted of some criminal offense. They are places where political dissidents and members of national or minority groups are confined for reasons of state security, exploitation, or punishment for imagined or accused crimes.
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In wartime, civilians have been put in such camps to prevent their aiding the enemy or engaging in guerrilla warfare, or simply to terrorize a population into submission. During the South African War, fought from 1899 to 1902, the British put citizens of the republics of Transvaal and Cape Colony in South Africa in such camps. And shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Americans of Japanese descending on the West coast were placed in internment camps only because they were members of a specific ethnic group. They were forced to remain there throughout World War II.
The first concentration camps were established in 1933 for confinement of opponents of the Nazi Party. The supposed opposition soon included all Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and certain other groups. By 1939 there were six camps: Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Flossenbürg, and Ravensbrück. The outbreak of World War II caused a great demand for labor, and other camps were added. The most notorious was the camp system at Auschwitz in conquered Poland. Inmates were required to work for their wages in food. So little food was given, however, that many starved. Others died of exposure or overwork. The dead bodies were burned in huge crematoriums in or near the camps.
The most horrible extension of the concentration camp system was the establishment of extermination centers after 1940. They were set up primarily to kill Jews, as part of the slaughter of six million Jews and millions of Roma, Slavs, and others that is known as the Holocaust. Between 1.1 million and 1.5 million people were killed at Auschwitz, 750,000–900,000 at Treblinka, and at least 600,000 at Belzec. At some camps prisoners were also used for barbaric medical experiments. (See also Holocaust.)