Today is

By: Ikedi Ani-okoye.

Concentration camps and women

The state of research into the experience of women in concentration camps during the Holocaust is fraught with controversy. Since the most prolific and famous voices of Holocaust survivors have tended to be men, such as Victor Frankl and Elie Weisel, scholars have wondered if the voice of the female survivor has been ignored.

However, some, including famous feminists like Hanna Arendt, have questioned this claim as possibly detracting from the overall atrocities committed by the Nazis, and negating the fact that it was not men or women who were targeted for death, but Jews. Despite this controversy, it can be argued that significant differences did exist between the experiences of male and female victims in the Nazi concentration camps.

Concentration camps in Russia

I wrote this after finding out that Nebraska, Wyoming and Alaska now hold giant concentration internment camps, having apparently spread over from Russia to Alaska over the Bering Sea/the Bering Straight, and there are probably more in other outlying areas of the United States.

There were myriad Soviet concentration camps and mental institutions housing millions of people since WWI, and now we have the same thing in the supposedly "free" USA. What can we do about this horrible situation, one in which mentally institutionalized people are being first warehoused, then transferred over to huge warehouse style concentration camp facilities - and possibly, death camp facilities? They have this in China too, and it's said the period of life one has in China's death camps is three to five months.

Hitler and concentration camps

Due to a series of events, Hitler assumed dictatorial powers in March 23, 1933 when the Enabling Act was passed. With total power available to him, he quickly developed a sophisticated police and military force and used them to squelch anyone who criticized his authority. From this authority stemmed the first concentation camp, Dachau, just outside of Munich which started as a political prison camp but evolved over time into a full scale Nazi concentration camp to exterminate Jews and others.

CONCLUSION

The Oxfore english dictionary , 2nd ed. defines concentration camp as: a camp where non-combatants of a district are accommodated, such as those instituted by Lord Kitchener during the South African war of 1899-1902; one for the internment of political prisoners, foreign nationals, etc., esp. as organized by the Nazi regime in Germany before and during the war of 1939-45.