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Argentina
These were relatively small secret detention centres rather than actual camps. The peak years were 1976-78. Nearly 9,000 people are definitely known to have been killed: see the authoritative 1984 CONADEP (Argentine National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) Report. It states that "We have reason to believe that the true figure is much higher"; a figure of 30,000 is often quoted. This worst case total figure, although frightful, is a small fraction of the throughput of just one of the smaller Nazi camps. A list of camps, full details, and documentation are to be found in the Report. AustraliaIn World War I 2,940 German and Austrian men were interned in ten different camps in Australia. In 1915 many of the smaller ones were closed and their inmates transferred to others. The largest camp was at Holdsworthy in New South Wales.[2] Their families were placed in a camp near Canberra. While during the Second World War, 4,721 Italian migrants were interned in Australia.[3] Austria-HungaryDuring the First World War, internment camps were set up, mostly for Serbs and other pro-Serbian Yugoslavs. Men, women, the children and the elderly were displaced from their homes and sent to concentration camps all over the Empire such as Doboj (46,000), Arad, Győr, Neusiedl am See. United KingdomSouth AfricaImage:LizzieVanZyl.jpg Lizzie van Zyl, shortly before her death in Bloemfontein Concentration Camp
The camps were situated at Aliwal North, Balmoral, Barberton, Belfast, Bethulie, Bloemfontein, Brandfort, Heidelberg, Heilbron, Howick, Irene, Kimberley, Klerksdorp, Kroonstad, Krugersdorp, Merebank, Middelburg, Norvalspont, Nylstroom, Pietermaritzburg, Pietersburg, Pinetown, Port Elizabeth, Potchefstroom, Springfontein, Standerton, Turffontein, Vereeniging, Volksrust, Vredefort and Vryburg. Though they were not extermination camps, the women and children of Boer men who were still fighting were given smaller rations than others. The poor diet and inadequate hygiene led to endemic contagious diseases such as measles, typhoid and dysentery. Coupled with a shortage of medical facilities, this led to large numbers of deaths — a report after the war concluded that 27,927 Boer (of whom 22,074 were children under 16) and 14,154 black Africans had died of starvation, disease and exposure in the camps. In all, about 25% of the Boer inmates and 12% of the black African ones died (although recent research suggests that the black African deaths were underestimated and may have actually been around 20,000). In contrast to these figures, only around 3,000 Boer men were killed (in combat) during the Second Boer War. A delegate of the South African Women and Children's Distress Fund, Emily Hobhouse, did much to publicise the distress of the inmates on her return to Britain after visiting some of the camps in the Orange Free State. Her fifteen-page report caused uproar, and led to a government commission, the Fawcett Commission, visiting camps from August to December 1901 which confirmed her report. They were highly critical of the running of the camps and made numerous recommendations, for example improvements in diet and provision of proper medical facilities. By February 1902 the annual death-rate dropped to 6.9% and eventually to 2%. Improvements made to the white camps were not as swiftly extended to the black camps. Hobhouse's pleas went mostly unheeded in the latter case. Namibia (German South-West Africa)During period 1904 - 1908 following the German suppression of a revolt by the Heroro tribespeople, survivors were interned in concentration camps.[2] During World War I, South African troops (then a part of the British Empire) invaded neighboring German South-West Africa. German settlers were rounded up and sent to concentration camps in Pretoria and later in Pietermaritzburg. The Isle of ManDuring World War I the British government interned male citizens of the Central Powers, principally Germany, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey.[4] They were held mainly in internment camps at Knockaloe, close to Peel, and a smaller one near Douglas. During World War II, about 8,000 people were interned in Britain, many being held in camps at Knockaloe, close to Peel, and a smaller one near Douglas. They included enemy aliens from the Axis Powers, principally Germany and Italy.[5] Initially refugees who had fled from Germany were also included, as were suspected British Nazi sympathisers, such as British Union of Fascists leader Oswald Mosley. Initially the British government rounded up 74,000 German, Austrian and Italian aliens. However, within 6 months the 112 alien tribunals had individually summoned and examined 64,000 aliens, and the vast majority were released, having been found to be "friendly aliens" (mostly Jews); examples include Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold and members of the Amadeus Quartet. British nationals were detained under Defence Regulation 18B. Eventually only 2,000 of the remainder were interned. Initially they were shipped overseas, but that was halted when a German U boat sank the SS Arandora Star in July 1940 with the loss of 800 internees, though this was not the first loss that had occurred. The last internees were released late in 1945, though many were released in 1942. In Britain, internees were housed in camps and prisons. Some camps had tents rather than buildings with internees sleeping directly on the ground. Men and women were separated and most contact with the outside world was denied. A number of prominent Britons including writer H. G. Wells campaigned against the internment of refugees.
CyprusAfter World War II British efforts to prevent Jewish emigration into Palestine led to the construction of camps in Cyprus where up to 30,000 Holocaust survivors were held at any one time to prevent their entry into Palestine. They were released in February 1949 (Source: N. Bogner, The Deportation Island: Jewish Illegal Immigrant Camps on Cyprus 1946-1948, Tel-Aviv 1991 in Hebrew). KenyaDuring the 1954-60 Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya, camps were established to hold suspected rebels. It is unclear how many were held but estimates range up to 1.5 million - or practically the entire Kikuyu population. Between 130,000 and 300,000 are thought to have died as a result. Maltreatment is said to have included torture and summary executions. In addition as many as a million members of the Kikuyu tribe were subjected to ethnic cleansing. (Sources: . R. Edgerton, Mau Mau: An African Crucible, London 1990 page 180; C. Elkins,“Detention, Rehabilitation & the Destruction of Kikuyu Society”in Mau Mau and Nationhood, Editors Odhiambo and Lonsdale, Oxford 2003 pages 205-7; C. Elkins, "Britain's Gulag: The Brutal End Of Empire In Kenya", 2005). Channel IslandsAlderney in the Channel Islands was the only place in the British Isles where German concentration camps were established during the Occupation of the Channel Islands. In January 1942, the occupying German forces established four camps, called Helgoland, Norderney, Borkum and Sylt (after the German North Sea islands), where captive Russians and other east Europeans were used as slave labour to build Atlantic Wall defences on the island. Around 460 prisoners died in the Alderney camps. Northern IrelandDuring the Anglo-Irish War, 12,000 Irishmen were held without trial. One of the most famous example of modern internment—and one which made world headlines—occurred in Northern Ireland in 1971, when hundreds of nationalists and republicans were arrested by the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary on the orders of the then Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Brian Faulkner, with the backing of the British government. Historians generally view that period of internment as inflaming sectarian tensions in Northern Ireland while failing in its stated aim of arresting members of the paramilitary Provisional IRA, because many of the people arrested were completely unconnected with that organisation but had had their names appear on the list of those to be interned through bungling and incompetence, and over 100 IRA men escaped arrest. The backlash against internment and its bungled application contributed to the decision of the British government under Prime Minister Edward Heath to suspend the Stormont governmental system in Northern Ireland and replace it with direct rule from London, under the authority of a British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. From 1971 internment began, beginning with the arrest of 342 suspected republican guerrillas and paramilitary members on August 9. They were held at HM Prison Maze. By 1972, 924 men were interned. Serious rioting ensued, and 23 people died in three days. The British government attempted to show some balance by arresting some loyalist paramilitaries later, but out of the 1,981 men interned, only 107 were loyalists. Internment was ended in 1975, but had resulted in increased support for the IRA and created political tensions which culminated in the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike and the death of Bobby Sands MP. The imprisonment of people under anti-terrorism laws specific to Northern Ireland continued until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, but these laws required the right to a fair trial be respected. However non-jury Diplock courts tried paramilitary-related trials, to prevent jury intimidation. Many of those interned were held in a prison called Long Kesh, later known as the Maze Prison outside Belfast. Internment had previously been used as a means of repressing the Irish Republican Army. It was used between 1939 - 1945 and 1956 - 1962. On all these occasions, internment has had a somewhat limited success. CambodiaCambodia under the Pol Pot regime: see the article Democratic Kampuchea. CanadaJapanese internment and relocation centresDuring World War II, Canada followed the U.S. lead in interning residents of Japanese and Italian ancestry. The Canadian government also interned citizens it deemed dangerous to national security. This included both fascists (including Canadians such as Adrien Arcand who had negotiated with Hitler to obtain positions in the government of Canada once Canada was conquered), Montreal mayor Camilien Houde (for denouncing conscription) and union organizers and other people deemed to be dangerous Communists. Such internment was made legal by the Defence of Canada Regulations, Section 21 of which read:
Over 75% were Canadian citizens and they were vital in key areas of the economy, notable the fishery and also in logging and berry farming. Exile took two forms: relocation centres for families and relatively well-off individuals who were a low security threat, and interment camps (often called concentration camps in contemporary accounts, but controversially so) which were for single men, the less well-off, and those deemed to be a security risk. After the war, many did not return to the Coast because of bitter feelings as to their treatment, and fears of further hostility from non-Japanese citizens; of those that returned only a few regained confiscated property and businesses. Most remained in other parts of Canada, notably certain parts of the BC Interior and in the neighbouring province of Alberta. Camps and relocation centres in the Kootenay regionGreenwood, Salmo, Rosebery, New Denver, Lemon Creek, Slocan City, Kaslo and Sandon Some were nearly-empty ghost towns when the internment began, others, like Kaslo and Greenwood, while less populous than in their boom years, were substantial communities. Camps and relocation centres elsewhere in BCBridge River, Minto City, McGillivray Falls, East Lillooet, Taylor Lake. The first three listed were all in a mountainous area so physically isolated that fences and guards were not required as the only egress from that region was by rail or water only. McGillivray Falls and Tashme, on the Crowsnest Highway east of Hope, British Columbia, were just over the minimum 100 miles from the Coast required by the deportation order. Camps and relocation centres elsewhere in CanadaThere were internment camps near Petawawa, Ontario; Kananaskis, Alberta;and Hull, Quebec. Further information
Ukrainian Canadian internmentIn World War I, 8,579 male "aliens of enemy nationality" were interned, including 5,954 Austro-Hungarians, most of whom were probably ethnic Ukrainians. Many of these internees were used for forced labour in internment camps. See Ukrainian Canadian internment. Further Information
ChileConcentration camps existed throughout Chile during Pinochet's regime in the 1970s and 80s. The below list is not complete:
CroatiaThe Ustaše established concentration camps for Serbs.
FinlandIn the aftermath of the Finnish Civil War of 1918, some 75,000 enemy prisoners of war of the losing side and suspected Communists were incarcerated in camps. While 125 Communist prisoners were convicted of treason and executed, an estimated 12,000 died of disease and starvation and an unknown number lost their lives after release, some of them shot after return to their home villages. When the Finnish Army during the Continuation War occupied East Karelia 1941–1944 that was inhabited by ethnically related Finnic Karelians (although it never had been a part of Finland — or before 1809 of Sweden-Finland), several concentration camps were set up for Russian civilians. The first camp was set up on 24 October, 1941, in Petrozavodsk. The two largest groups were 6,000 Russian refugees and 3,000 inhabitants from the southern bank of River Svir forcibly evacuated because of the closeness of the front line. Around 4,000 of the prisoners perished due to malnourishment, 90% of them during the spring and summer 1942.[7] The ultimate goal was to move the Russian speaking population to German-occupied Russia in exchange for any Finnic population from these areas, and also help to watch civilians. Population in the Finnish camps: FranceAlgeriaDuring France's occupation of Algeria, large numbers of Algerians were forced into "tent cities" and concentration camps both during the initial French invasion in 1830s, and particularly during the Algerian War of Independence. During the early part of the colonial period, camps were used mostly to forcibly remove Arabs, Berbers and Turks from fertile areas of land and replace them by primarily French, Spanish, and Maltese settlers. It has been estimated that from 1830 to 1900, between 15 and 25% of the Algerian population died in such camps and the war in general killed a third of Algeria's population. During the Algerian War of Independence the populations of whole villages which were suspected to have supported the rebel FLN were incarcerated in such camps. Vichy FranceDuring World War II, The French Vichy government ran what were called "detention camps" such as the one at Drancy. Camps also existed in the Pyrenees, on the border with pro-Nazi Spain, among them Camp Gurs. 73,000 Jews were deported to Nazi Germany. In addition, areas which were annexed by Germany formally from France such as Alsace-Lorraine had concentration camps set up, the largest being Natzweiler-Struthof. GermanyMain article: Nazi concentration camps. See also: List of concentration camps of Nazi Germany, Holocaust, Ilag, Arbeitslager Image:Buchenwald.jpg Buchenwald concentration camp Image:Majorcampseurope.gif Major German concentration camps, 1944. In World War I male civilian citizens of the Allies caught by the outbreak of war on the territory of the Germany were interned. One of the camps was at Ruhleben on a horse race-track near Berlin.[8] On January 30 1933 Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor of the weak coalition government. Although the Nazi party (NSDAP) was in a minority, Hitler and his associates quickly took control of the country.[9] Within days the first Concentration camp (Konzentrationslager) Dachau was built to hold persons considered dangerous by the Nazi administration - these included suspected communists, labor union activists, liberal politicians and even pastors. This camp became the model for all later Nazi concentration camps. It was quickly followed by Oranienburg-Sachsenhausen which became a facility for the training of SS-Death's Head officers in the operation of concentration camps. Theodor Eicke, commandant of Dachau camp, was appointed "Inspector of Concentration Camps" by Himmler on 4 July 1934. This started the second phase of development. All smaller detention camps were consolidated into six major camps - Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Flossenburg, and after the annexation of Austria in 1938 - Mauthausen, finally in 1939 Ravensbrück (for women). The pajama type blue-striped uniforms were introduced for inmates as well as the practice of tattooing the prisoner's number on his fore-arm. Eicke started the practice of farming out prisoners as slave-labor in German industry, with sub-camps or Arbeitskommandos to house them. The use of common criminals as Kapo, to brutalize and assist in the handling of prisoners, was instituted at this time. In November 1938 the massive arrests of German Jews started, with most of them being immediately sent to the concentration camps, where they were separated from other prisoners and subjected to even harsher treatment. Probably it was at this time that German people started referring (in hushed voices) to the camps as Kah-Tzets (the initials KZ in the German language.) The third phase started after the occupation of Poland in 1939. In the first few months Polish intellectuals were detained, including nearly the entire staff of Cracow university arrested in November 1939.[10] Auschwitz-I and Stutthof concentration camp were built to house them and other political prisoners. Large numbers were executed or died from the brutal treatment and disease. After the occupation of Belgium, France and Netherlands in 1940, Natzweiler-Struthof, Gross Rosen and Fort Breendonk, in addition to a number of smaller camps, were set up to house intellectuals and political prisoners from those countries that had not already been executed.[11] It must be noted that many of these intellectuals were held first in Gestapo prisons, only those who were not executed immediately after interrogation were sent on to the concentration camps. The final phase was the extermination of Jews. Initially, Jews in the occupied countries were interned either in other KZ, but predominantly in Ghettos that were walled off parts of cities. All the Jews in western Poland (annexed into the Reich) were transported to ghettos in the General Government. Jews were used for labor in industries, but usually transported to work then returned to the KZ or the ghetto at night. During the German advance into Russia in 1941 and 1942 Jewish soldiers and civilians were systematically executed by the Einsatzgruppen of the S.S. that followed the front-line troops. At the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942 the "Final Solution" was decreed to exterminate all of the remaining Jews in Europe, Heydrich stated that there were still 11 million to be eliminated.[12] To accomplish this special Vernichtungslager (Extermination Camps) were to be organized. The first was Chełmno in which 152,000, mainly from the Łódź ghetto, were killed. The method for carrying out mass murder was tested and perfected here. During 1942 and 1943 further camps Auschwitz-Birkenau II, part of Majdanek, Treblinka, Bełżec and Sobibor were built for this purpose. Jews from other concentration camps, and from the ghettos, were transported to them from all over occupied Europe. In these six camps alone, an estimated 3.1 million Jews were killed in gas chambers and the bodies burned in massive crematoria. The Nazis realized that this was a criminal act[citation needed] and the action was shrouded in secrecy. The extermination camps were destroyed in 1944 and early 1945 and buried. However the Soviet armies overran Auschwitz and Majdanek before the evidence could be totally destroyed. Another category of internment camp in Nazi Germany was the Labor camp (Arbeitslager). They housed civilians from the occupied countries that were being used to work in industry, on the farms, in quarries, in mines and on the railroads. Although conditions were harsh and food and medical care inadequate, they were not concentration camps. More workers died in them from Allied bombs or industrial accidents than from the difficult living conditions. The workers were mostly young and taken from the occupied countries, predominantly eastern Europe, but also many French and Italian. They were sometimes taken willingly, more frequently as a result of lapanka in Polish, or rafle in French language, in which people were collected on the street or in their home by police drives. However, for often very minor infractions of the rules, workers were imprisoned in special Arbeitserziehungslager, German for Worker re-education camp, (abbreviated to AEL and sometimes referred to as Straflager).[13] These punishment camps were operated by the Gestapo and many of the inmates were executed or died from the brutal treatment. Finally there was one category of internment camp, called Ilag in which Allied, mainly British and American, civilians were held that had been caught behind front lines by the rapid advance of the German armies, or the sudden entry of the United States into the war. In these camps the Germans abided by the rules of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Any deaths resulted from sickness or simply old age. After World War II, internment camps were used by the Allied occupying forces to hold suspected Nazis, usually using the facilities of previous Nazi camps. They were all closed down by 1949. In East Germany the communist government used prison camps to hold political prisoners, opponents of the communist regime or suspected Nazi collaborators.
Italy
JapanJapanese WWII Camps in AsiaSee: List of Japanese POW camps during World War II Japan conquered south-east Asia in a series of victorious campaigns over a few months from December 1941. By March 1942 many civilians, particularly westerners in the region's European colonies, found themselves behind enemy lines and were subsequently interned by the Japanese. The nature of civilian internment varied from region to region. Some civilians were interned soon after invasion; in other areas the process occurred over many months. In total, approximately 130,000 Allied civilians were interned by the Japanese during this period of occupation. The exact number of internees will never be known as records were often lost, destroyed, or simply not kept. The backgrounds of the internees were diverse. There was a large proportion of Dutch from the Dutch East Indies, but they also included Americans, British, and Australians. They included missionaries and their families, colonial administrators, and business people. Many had been living in the colonies for decades. Single women had often been nuns, missionaries, doctors, teachers and nurses. Civilians interned by the Japanese were treated marginally better than the prisoners of war, but their death rates were the same. Although they had to work to run their own camps, few were made to labour on construction projects. The Japanese devised no consistent policies or guidelines to regulate the treatment of the civilians. Camp conditions and the treatment of internees varied from camp to camp. The general experience, however, was one of malnutrition, disease, and varying degrees of harsh discipline and brutality from the Japanese guards. The camps varied in size from four people held at Pangkalpinang in Sumatra to the 14,000 held in Tjihapit in Java. Some were segregated according to gender or race, there were also many camps of mixed gender. Some internees were held at the same camp for the duration of the war, and others were moved about. The buildings used to house internees were generally whatever was available, including schools, warehouses, universities, hospitals, and prisons. Organisation of the internment camps varied by location. The Japanese administered some camps directly; others were administered by local authorities under Japanese control. Some of the camps were left for the internees to self-govern. In the mixed and male camps, management often fell to the men who were experienced in administration before their internment. In the women's camps the leaders tended to be the women who had held a profession prior to internment. One of the most famous concentration camps operated by the Japanese during World War II was at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, the Philippines. The Dominican university was expropriated by the Japanese at the beginning of the occupation, and was used to house mostly American civilians, but also British subjects, for the duration of the war. There, men, women and children suffered from malnutrition and poor sanitation. The camp was liberated in 1945. The liberation of camps was not a uniform process. Many camps were liberated as the forces were recapturing territory. For other internees, freedom occurred many months after the surrender of the Japanese, and in the Dutch East Indies, liberated internees faced the uncertainty of the Indonesian war of independence. Civilian internees were generally disregarded in official histories, and few received formal recognition. Ironically, however, civilian internees have become the subject of several influential books and films. Agnes Newton Keith's account of internment in Sandakan and Batu Lintang camp, Kuching, Three Came Home (1947), was one of the first of the memoirs. More recent publications include Shirley Fenton-Huie's The Forgotten Ones (1992) and Jan Ruff O'Herne's Fifty Years of Silence (1997). Nevil Shute's novel A Town Like Alice was filmed in 1956, and J. G. Ballard's Empire of the Sun in 1987. Other films and television dramas have included Tenko and Paradise Road. NetherlandsIn World War I both German and Allied soldiers and sailors that crossed into neutral Netherlands were interned. The camp for the British, mostly sailors, was in Groningen[14] During World War II a camp was built in 1939 at Westerbork by the Dutch government for interning Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi Germany. This camp was later used during the German occupation as a waystation for Dutch Jews eventually deported to extermination camps in the East. New ZealandIn World War I German civilians living in New Zealand were interned in camps on Motuihe and Somes Islands. North KoreaMain article: Human rights in North Korea Location of Known Concentration Camps North Korea is known to operate five concentration camps, currently accommodating a total of over 200,000 prisoners, though the only one that has allowed outside access is Camp #15 in Yodok, South Hamgyong Province. Once condemned as political criminals in North Korea, the defendant and his or her family are incarcerated in one of the camps without trial and cut off from all outside contact. Prisoners reportedly work 14 hour days at hard labor and/or ideological re-education. Starvation and disease are commonplace. Political criminals invariably receive life sentences, however their families are usually released after 3 year sentences, if they pass political examinations after extensive study. Concentration camps came into being in North Korea in the wake of the country's liberation from Japanese colonial rule at the end of World War II. Those persons considered "adversary class forces", such as landholders, Japanese collaborators, religious devotees and families of those who migrated to the South, were rounded up and detained in a large facility. Additional camps were established later in earnest to incarcerate political victims in power struggles in the late 1950s and 60s and their families and overseas Koreans who migrated to the North. The number of camps saw a marked increase later in the course of cementing the Kim Il Sung dictatorship and the Kim Jong-il succession. About a dozen concentration camps were in operation until the early 1990s, the figure of which is believed to have been curtailed to five today due to increasing criticism of the North's perceived human rights abuses from the international community and the North's internal situation. Perhaps the most well-known depiction of life in the North Korean camps has been provided by Kang Chol-hwan in his memoir The Aquariums of Pyongyang. People's Republic of ChinaConcentration camps in the People's Republic of China are called Laogai, which means "reform through labor". The communist-era camps began at least in the 1960s and were filled with anyone who had said anything critical of the government, or often just random people grabbed from their homes to fill quotas. The entire society was organized into small groups in which loyalty to the government was enforced, so that anyone with dissident viewpoints was easily identifiable for enslavement. These camps were modern slave labor camps, organized like factories. There are accusations that Chinese labor camp[15] produce products are often sold in foreign countries with the profits going to the PRC government. Products include everything from green tea to industrial engines to coal dug from mines. The use of prison labor is an interesting case study of the interaction between capitalism and prison labor. On the one hand, the downfall of socialism has reduced revenue to local governments increasing pressure for local governments to attempt to supplement their income using prison labor. On the other hand, prisoners do not make a good workforce, and the products produced by prison labor in China are of extremely low quality and have become unsellable on the open market in competition with products made by ordinary paid labor. An insider's view from the 1950s to the 1990s is detailed in the books of Harry Wu, including Troublemaker and The Laogai. He spent almost all of his adult life as a prisoner in these camps for criticizing the government while he was a young student in college. He almost died several times, but eventually escaped to the US. Party officials have argued that he far overstates the present role of Chinese labor camps and ignores the tremendous changes that have occurred in China since then. See also: human rights in the People's Republic of China PolandAfter World War 2 Poland established a system of concentration and internment camps where "capitalists" were imprisoned as well as Ukrainians and Germans. Russia and the Soviet UnionIn Imperial Russia, labor camps were known under the name katorga. In the Soviet Union, concentration camps were called simply camps, almost always plural ("lagerya"). These were used as forced labor camps, and were often filled with political prisoners. After Alexander Solzhenitsyn's book they have become known to the rest of the world as Gulags, after the branch of NKVD (state security service) that managed them. (In the Russian language, the term is used to denote the whole system, rather than individual camps.) In addition to what is sometimes referred to as the GULAG proper (consisting of the "corrective labor camps") there were "corrective labor colonies", originally intended for prisoners with short sentences, and "special resettlements" of deported peasants. At its peak, the system held a combined total of 2,750,000 prisoners. The total number of people who passed through the camps is, of course, much larger. There are records of reference to concentration camps by Soviet officials (including Lenin) as early as December 1917. While the primary purpose of Soviet camps was not mass extermination of prisoners, in many cases the outcome was death or permanent disabilities. The total documentable deaths in the corrective-labor system from 1934 to 1953 amount to 1,054,000, including political and common prisoners; this does not include nearly 800,000 executions of "counterrevolutionaries" outside the camp system. From 1932 to 1940, at least 390,000 peasants died in places of peasant resettlement; this figure may overlap with the above, but, on the other hand, it does not include deaths outside the 1932-1940 period, or deaths among non-peasant internal exiles. After WWII, some 3,000,000 German soldiers and civilians were sent to Soviet labor camps, as part of war reparations by labor force. Only about 2,000,000 returned to Germany. A special kind of forced labor, informally called sharashka, was for engineering and scientific labor. The famous Soviet rocket designer Sergey Korolev worked in a "sharashka", as did Lev Termen and many other prominent Russians. Solzhenitsyn's book | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
