What is the difference between concentration camps and extermination camps?

Answer 1

General Difference Between A Concentration Camp vs Extermination Camp:NOTE: For information on the the difference as regards **Nazi** camps, please see the related question at the bottom

• In a concentration camp you are generally just held there, somewhat like a prison, possibly doing hard labor for an indefinite amount of time and the name says it all for the extermination camp. It's merely a holding place where, although you may do labor as well, your ultimate destiny is execution. It's sad, but true.

• Most people think of the Nazis as having formed the first concentration/extermination camps. While they did in fact exterminate over 6.5 million Jews and over another 6.5 million non Jews they cannot begin to compare to the extermination attempts of 'the church' in the middle or dark ages. The church via the crusades put over 52 million people to death. All one had to do if one wanted someone eliminated was accuse them of some sort of witchcraft. It was not up to the accuser in most cases to prove it, it was up to the accused to disprove it. Unfortunately the only methods allowed to disprove it usually ended up the accused person's death. The first recorded group to use the 'camp' method of control and extermination was and is the US Government. In the early 1700s the US Government herded all the Cherokee tribe that they could find together and forced them to march almost 1400 miles from the eastern seaboard to what was later called the Oklahoma Territory. Almost 75% of them died en route. It came to be known as the Trail of Tears. The reason it is called the trail of tears is not because the Cherokee people wept at the loss of their family members. It was called this because people along the route when they saw the conditions that the Cherokee were forced to endure, and saw them carrying their dead on their backs to their new home in order to properly bury them wept at the sight. Military officers offered wagons for this use, but the Cherokee did not accept. Later and even today most native Americans reside in what is called -reservations-. All this was actually a means to the end of exterminating them. They were given blankets that were known to have disease bearing fleas in order to carry out this extermination process. Other concentration camps was used by the British on the 'Boers' or Afrikaners of South Africa, as they are known today. Boer war 1899 - 1902. Oh yes, let us not forget the 'concentration' camps (resettlement camps) that most of the US CITIZEN Japanese were forced to relocate to during WWII. To this day most of them have not received even a pathetic apology for this, much less adequate remuneration for the lost future value of the property and businesses that were stolen from them and given to someone else. One might ask how does this sort of thing come about. The best explanation comes with the question 'Why did GOD allow HIS people the Jews to be treated this way by the Nazis?' Many have said that this was GOD'S punishment for the Jews killing JESUS. The fact is it was the Romans that that physically put HIM to death, but it was our sin which caused HIS death. Actually it was because over ONE BILLION people whom lived on the face of the earth prior to and during WWII sat back in apathy and allowed not only a tyrant and his henchmen to run amok throughout Europe during the late 1920s, all of the 1930s and the first half of the 1940s, they also chose to ignore the millions of dispatches coming out of Europe about what the Nazis were doing. Know what? The same thing is going on today in the Sudan and much of South Africa. I cannot help but wonder if the USA is now paying the price of what it has put native Americans and others through in the name of liberty. What I do know is that GOD has blessed the USA with abundant freedom. I also know that when GOD gives an abundant blessing HE does so with the intent that the blessing be shared. If it is not shared it is very likely that the abundant part will be gone before long. If it is hoarded you can be assured that both the blessing and the abundance will disappear. Our US Military whom are doing what they are able to share the blessing with others need to be supported and not disregarded simply because a bunch of do gooders don't like the politics that are necessary to accomplish this. AND what I have come to know is that when GOD'S people do not take the blessing to the poor, HE will bring the poor to the blessing. Could the reason for this be what is now called -illegal immigrants- after all no one seems to know what to do about that situation. If this is HIS doing, guess what, there will be no man whom can find the resolution.

• The Indians did reach Canada and were met by the Mounted Police. As the above poster said, people had tears in their eyes when they saw these proud people carrying their dead and were half-starved. The journey was hard for all. A great proud people were dwindling before every one's eyes. The Canadian Government had no problem giving land to the Indians and allowing them to stay, but the American Government kicked up such a fuss that they were forced back into the U.S. The Indians were forced onto reservations (a type of concentration camp) as the U.S. Government had promised to provide them with food and clothing, but many times the Indians did not receive this. In the Nazi extermination camps many different nationalities were held by the Nazis; some were exterminated in the cars of the trains; others did labor and then groups would be exterminated when they thought they were going to have a shower and cyanide was used to murder them. As sad as these stories are you can beat, torture, chase-down any proud group of people, but you can NEVER kill the spirit. All of us should learn from such stories of concentration camps or any form of human abuse and know that they still exist in other countries today. What about the forgotten country ... AFRICA! The Congo is brutal and people are dying so fast there are more dead than the living.

Answer 2

A concentration camp was a place where persons were kept imprisoned, usually for political reasons. Here they would labor and live, sometimes for years. The first modern use of them was by the British in the later stages of the Boer War (1899-1902) in South Africa, when confronted with determined guerrilla warfare by the Boers. In order to end this guerrilla war, they rounded up the Boer civilians (mainly women and children), burned down their homes and sent them to camps. (The purpose of this was to make sure that the guerrillas had no shelter or support). The camps were badly run, soon became overcrowded and insanitary. About 20% of the inmates died of disease within two years.

Similarly, many persons died in the German run concentration camps. It is not healthy to have many persons in cramped quarters for long periods. Even if food and medical care are plentiful (and they were not) - many deaths will occur. The USA also ran concentration camps for the Japanese. America, being a wealthy nation, gave relatively good rations and medical care to the Japanese. There was no forced labor either. The camps were cramped but not overcrowded compared to those in Europe and Russia and thus the mortality rate was much lower.

Contrast this with an extermination camp. Only Germany and Russia had such camps to my knowledge. Here persons were sent to die and die quickly. In Germany most were gassed, others killed by overwork or other means. In Russia the main methods were by forced hard labor, poor diet and extreme climate.

Answer 3

The terms have been used interchangeably so frequently that the words themselves shed little light on what actually went on in concentration camps and extermination camps.

For starters, they were ALL death camps. Some just made sure you died quicker than others. The simplest way to differentiate the two would be the example or the "forced labor" camps vs. the "extermination" camps. Unfortunately, not everything falls neatly into those two categories.

A good example is the 15 or more "concentration camps" created in France from '42-'44. The primary goal of these camps was deportation. In many cases, however, the victims of these camps were deported to places where they were then rounded up and killed. Of the deportees, approx 80,000 Jews were shipped directly to Auschwitz where most were murdered immediately.

The goal of other French concentration camps was to "deport" all of the Jews to their "rightful" homelands. Many of those homelands were places already conquered by or targets of the Nazi regime meaning that the Jews were being sent to other countries so the French wouldn't have to pull the trigger themselves. In my mind, this also qualifies Deportation camps as both concentration camps and death camps.

Concentration camps were also the places where the Nazis cruel "medical" experiments were carried out. Most of these experiments resulted in the death or permanent disfigurement of the subjects.

Many of the places we might label as concentration camps became death camps during the Nazi regimes "final solution". Places where Jews, gypsies and other undesirables were sent to work as forced labor would later become death camps as the Nazis found more efficient ways of executing large numbers of prisoners at one time. Gas chambers, Firing squads and gas vans. The Gas vans were particularly "efficient" because they ensured the prisoners being transported were dead by the time they reached the designated camp. So if a "gas Van" is sent to a "concentration camp" doesn't that make it a death camp as well?

The point I would make here is that in the end the terms "Death Camp" and "Concentration Camp" aren't that different at all. I suspect that the different terms were coined only for the comfort of the people using them.

Answer 4

Concentration Camps - more similar to giving "detention", but these camps focused on forced labor.

Extermination Camp - also called "death camps". This is where they would all be gassed in the gas chambers.

Answer 5

Technically all camps were within the concentration camp system, there were labour camps, transit camps and extermination camps. Concentration camps were generally intended for civillians, initially just for criminals, but gradually more types were included.

Extermination camps were established about seven and a half years after the first concentration camps. They were much smaller than the average concentration camps (Auschwitz is an exception as it was both), as they only held enough inmates that were needed to opperate the gas chambers/vans and the cramatoria.

Answer 6

Extermination camps had very few inmates, only enough to staff the facility, which was purely a killing centre. Concentration camps were camps which held people.

The exception was Auschwitz, which served as both.

Answer 7

in a concertration camp the Nazis make the Jews work but in the extermination camps they send you to the gas chambers

Answer 8

in the extermanation camp you are going to get killed painless and fast in the concentration camp you died by illness or loloootiu69r wirheafb OW45hQ)