What Counts as a Concentration Camp?
Even for Nazi Camp survivors who sought to eradicate them, they were hard to define.
When US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez prompted a public debate in June by using the words ‘concentration camps’ to describe detention centres at the southern US border, historians were quick to jump into the fray. Whether or not they agreed with Ocasio-Cortez hinged primarily on what definition they gave to the term. Those who conceptualised concentration camps simply as civilian mass detention facilities agreed readily with her characterisation. Others hesitated, citing the absence of certain forms of brutality or the lack of clear intent on the part of the Trump administration to create vast territorial zones of extra-legality and isolation.
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