Concentration camps are internment centers where political prisoners and members of minority groups are imprisoned and exploited. Concentration camps are different from prisons, where individuals are lawfully confined for committing crimes. They are also distinct from prisoner-of-war camps, where captured military personnel are detained under the laws of war.
After assuming power in Germany in 1933, the Nazis established their first concentration camps for their political opponents, including communists, trade unionists, and Social Democrats. Later, these camps were expanded to imprison Jews, German male homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies, and others considered incompatible with Nazi social and racial principles. Under SS guard, living conditions were harsh and concentration camp prisoners were often forced to do hard labor for German military and industrial enterprises. Inmates frequently died from abuse, malnutrition, exhaustion, exposure, or disease.
The United States also built concentration camps during World War II. From February 1942 until the end of the war, U.S. internment camps confined more than 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent, many of whom were second- and third-generation U.S. citizens.
