Concentration camp
- From: benlizross <benlizro@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2006 09:56:11 +1300
I tried posting this twice to the "Strange land" thread, but for some
reason it did not seem to move beyond my local server.
The question being discussed there was whether "concentration camp" was
a phrase or concept known in the USA before 1945. I now have some
positive evidence, thanks to ProQuest's files of the NY Times.
One interesting finding is that there is a strictly military sense (not
recognized by OED) of "camp where troops are concentrated", and this
first appears in the NYT in 1898, with reference to the Spanish-American
War. It also turns up in the 1920s in an account of an unsuccessful
military coup attempt in Mexico.
But we were mainly concerned with the 20s and 30s, so I limited the
search to 1920-1939. There were 1,929 hits -- roughly twice a week on
average during that period. Of course a few of these will be fortuitous
concatenations of the two words, but none of the ones I looked at were.
This small sample will give an idea of the range:
1920 (during the post-WWI Red Scare): Headline: Begin Procedure to
Deport Reds/...New Arrivals Will Be Sent to Concentration Camp at Camp
Upton....
1920/01/19: Maj Gen James G.Harbord, head of American Military Mission
to investigate conditions in Armenia and other sections of the Near
East: "Most of the refugees are huddled in concentration camps."
1920/02/09: REICHSTAG COMMITTEE CONSIDERS EXTRADITION...Fräulein Elsa
Scheiner, the only woman whose name appeared on the list of Germans
demanded by the Allies, is a daughter of a prominent professor of Berlin
University, and had charge of the women's concentration camp at
Valenciennes during the war.
1922/07/04: PATRIARCH TIKON IN JAIL....Archbishop John, the head of the
Orthodox Church in the Baltic States...declares that the Don monastery,
where the patriarch is confined, is really a concentration camp where
the Bolsheviki are holding prominent Russians who are considered
dangerous.
1929/06/24: More Earth Shocks in New Zealand....Virtually all settlers
in outlying districts...have now been rescued. Some of them have
traveled for three days almost without sleep to reach the concentration
camps.
1933/04/20: ARREST OF 20,000 BY NAZIS REPORTED...Those held now are
being transferred to concentration camps at various points in Germany.
I found no examples with quotation marks or parenthetical glosses which
might suggest that the expression was unfamiliar. I conclude that it was
a phrase known to American readers during the 1920s and 30s. It was used
with reference to many different parts of the world, including the USA.
In some cases it clearly has sinister implications; but it is also used,
as in the NZ item, to refer to relief centres or temporary accomodation
for disaster victims. (In one of the many stories relating to the 1927
Mississippi floods, the same place is referred to first as a
"concentration camp" and further down as a "refugee camp".) From 1933
on, however, there is a preponderance of stories about Germany, and of
concentration camps as places where Jews and political opponents of the
Nazis were being sent.
Ross Clark
.
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