concentration camp

noun

: a place where large numbers of people (such as prisoners of war, political prisoners, refugees, or the members of an ethnic or religious minority) are detained or confined under armed guard

—used especially in reference to camps created by the Nazis in World War II for the internment and persecution of Jews and other prisoners

The Nazi soldiers hauled [Mordechai] Strigler off to a concentration camp, and carved swastikas into his cheeks and forehead with a razor blade. Over the next five years, he was sent from one concentration camp or slave-labor camp to another.

—David Remnick

She ended up dying in a concentration camp, just a few months before she would have been liberated.

—Marilyn Reynolds

The V2 killed thousands of British civilians while 20,000 concentration camp inmates died as slave labourers during its manufacture in the closing stages of the second world war.

—Anna Tomforde et al.

see also death camp

Examples of concentration camp in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Stojka came to painting decades later, in her mid-fifties, with the mission of depicting life in the concentration camps. —Ben Davis, The New York Review of Books, 25 Apr. 2026

In 1943, the United States government administered a questionnaire to people of Japanese descent who had been confined to wartime concentration camps in California, Idaho, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Arkansas. —Hua Hsu, New Yorker, 20 Apr. 2026

Soon after, he was hired as a war crimes investigator and visited concentration camps during the World War II liberation to document Nazi crimes. —Lois K. Solomon, Sun Sentinel, 14 Apr. 2026

The movie includes footage of real historical tragedies — harrowing video from liberated concentration camps — along with contemporaneous ones, like the crash of PSA Flight 182, which happened less than two months before Faces of Death was released. —Louis Peitzman, Vulture, 10 Apr. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1901, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for concentration camp

• amp
• champ
• clamp
• cramp
• damp
• gamp
• lamp
• ramp
• samp
• scamp
• stamp
• tamp

Kids Definition

concentration camp

noun

: a camp where persons (as prisoners of war, political prisoners, or refugees) are detained