concentration camp

noun

Definition of concentration camp

: 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 RemnickShe ended up dying in a concentration camp, just a few months before she would have been liberated.— Marilyn ReynoldsThe 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

The Savsko Obdanište kindergarten in Belgrade is set to open in the fall, inside the same greying building that used to house the makeshift hospital at the Sajmište concentration camp, The Guardian reported. — Fox News, "Preschool to open at former Nazi concentration camp in Serbia," 15 Aug. 2019 On it, refugees hoping to flee to Britain are rounded up in concentration camps, and fascist populism gains traction by having an entertaining figurehead who’s not afraid to be ridiculous on TV. — Emily Todd Vanderwerff, Vox, "HBO’s Years and Years immerses us in our soon-to-be dystopia. Until it chickens out.," 4 Aug. 2019 This was after Alex Zadek had been imprisoned in a concentration camp, Sachsenhausen. — Jay Nordlinger, National Review, "Hilde Zadek’s Last Wishes," 26 July 2019 The protagonist of Anna Seghers’s novel Transit (1944)—the source for Christian Petzold’s new film of the same name—is a young German who, having escaped from a Nazi concentration camp and then a French work camp, makes his way to occupied Paris. — J. Hoberman, The New York Review of Books, "The Waiting Rooms of History," 7 Mar. 2019 He was handed over to the Germans and deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was kept alongside Léon Blum, France’s left-wing (and first Jewish) prime minister. — James Mcauley, Town & Country, "The Haunting of Paris: Georges Mandel and the Long Legacy of Nazi Violence," 6 Aug. 2019 Forty-nine of his relatives were killed in the concentration camps, but his parents and three of his four siblings managed to survive and emigrate to Israel. — Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter, "Artur Brauner, Holocaust Survivor and German Film Producer, Dies at 100," 7 July 2019 Holocaust survivor and beloved Hoosier Eva Mozes Kor died this morning just miles from the Auschwitz concentration camp, seventy-five years after first arriving there as a victim of torture under the Nazi regime. — London Gibson, Indianapolis Star, "Holocaust survivor and beloved Hoosier Eva Kor dies at 85," 4 July 2019 The couple got matching bands with rose gold triangles — a symbol for the LGBTQ community once used by the Nazis in concentration camps and now worn by some as a form of protest and pride. — Samantha Schmidt, Washington Post, "Gay rights or women’s rights? This pioneering lesbian activist refused to take a side.," 26 June 2019

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'concentration camp.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.