List of concentration and internment camps

Argentina

During the Dirty War which accompanied the 1976–1983 military dictatorship, there were over 300 places throughout the country that served as secret detention centres, where people were interrogated, tortured, and killed. Prisoners were often forced to hand and sign over property, in acts of individual, rather than official and systematic, corruption. Small children who were taken with their relatives, and babies born to female prisoners later killed, were frequently given for adoption to politically acceptable, often military, families. This is documented by a number of cases dating since the 1990s in which adopted children have identified their real families.

These were relatively small secret detention centres rather than actual camps. The peak years were 1976–78. According to the report of CONADEP (Argentine National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons) Report. 8,960 were killed during the Dirty War. It states that "We have reason to believe that the true figure is much higher" which is due to the fact that by the time they published the report (in late 1984) the research wasn't fully accomplished; Human Rights Organizations today consider 30,000 to be killed (disappeared). There was a total of 340 secret detention centres all over the country's territory.

ESMA

Australia

During World War I, 2,940 German and Austrian men were interned in ten different camps in Australia. Almost all of the men listed as being Austrians were from the Croatian coastal region of Dalmatia, then under Austrian rule.

In 1915 many of the smaller camps in Australia closed, with their inmates transferred to larger camps. The largest camp was at Holsworthy in New South Wales. Families of the interned men were placed in a camp near Canberra.

During World War II, there were internment camps in country in New South Wales at Orange and Hay for ethnic Germans in Australia of suspect loyalty; German refugees from Nazism including the "Dunera boys"; and Italian immigrants, many later transferred to Tatura in Victoria (4,721 Italian immigrants were interned in Australia).

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection currently jointly manages two immigration centres on Nauru and Manus Island with the host governments of Nauru and Papua New Guinea, for the indefinite detention of asylum seekers attempting to reach Australia by boat. The claims of the asylum seekers to refugee status are processed in these centres. They are a part of the Australian government's policy that asylum seekers attempting to reach Australia by boat will never be permitted to settle in Australia, even if they are found to be refugees, but may be settled in other countries. The clear intention of the Australian government's policy is to deter asylum seekers attempting to reach Australia by boat. The great majority of boats come from Indonesia, which is used as a convenient jumping-off point for asylum seekers from other countries who want to reach Australia.

These centres are not UNHCR endorsed refugee camps, and the operation of these facilities has caused controversy, such as allegations of torture and other breaches of human rights.

Austria-Hungary

During World War I, internment camps were set up, mostly for Serbs and other pro-Kingdom of Serbia supporters; the radical pan-Serbian black hand having played a role in the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand resulting in the outbreak of World War I. Citizens deemed enemies of the state were displaced from their homes and sent to camps throughout the Austria-Hungary Empire, to places such as Doboj (46,000), Arad, Győr and Neusiedl am See.

During the Nazi period, several concentration camps, for example the Mauthausen-Gusen camp, were located in Austria. These camps were overwhelmingly run by Austrian members of the NAZI party.

Bosnia and Herzegovina

During the Bosnian War, internment camps were set up, mostly for Bosniaks (also known as 'Bosnian Muslims') and other non-Serbs by the authorities of Republika Srpska. Camps were also set up by the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In a UN report, 381 out of 677 alleged camps have been corroborated and verified, involving all warring factions.

Buk Bijela (Serb-controlled)

Omarska camp (Serb-controlled)

Partizan sports hall (Serb-controlled)

Luka camp (Serb-controlled)

Liplje camp (Serb-controlled)

Batković camp (Serb-controlled)

Sušica camp (Serb-controlled)

Vilina Vlas (Serb-controlled)

Uzamnica camp (Serb-controlled)

Trnopolje camp (Serb-controlled)

Keraterm camp (Serb-controlled)

Manjača camp (Serb-controlled)

Čelebići prison camp (Bosniak/Croat-controlled)

Dretelj camp (Croat-controlled)

Heliodrom camp (Croat-controlled)

Gabela camp (Croat-controlled)

Vojno camp (Croat-controlled)

Iskra Stadium Camp (Bosniak-controlled)

Tarčin camp (Bosniak-controlled)

Viktor Bubanj camp (Bosniak-controlled)

Silos camp (Bosniak-controlled)

Sarajevo Central Prison (Bosniak-controlled)

Cambodia

The totalitarian Communist Khmer Rouge régime established concentration camps. Various studies have estimated the death toll most commonly between 1.4 million and 2.2 million, with perhaps half of those deaths being due to executions and the rest as a result of starvation and disease. This is a massive proportion of the Cambodian population, which was only 6–8 million.

Among the best-documented concentration camps were The Killing Fields and the torture camp Security Prison 21.

Ukrainian Canadian internment

In World War I, 8,579 male "aliens of enemy nationality" were interned, including 5,954 Austro-Hungarians, including ethnic Ukrainians, Croats, and Serbs. Many of these internees were used for forced labour in internment camps.

List of World War II prisoner-of-war camps in Canada

In the World War II, the Canadian government interned people of German, Italian and Japanese ancestry, besides citizens of other origins 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 Camillien 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, passed 3 September 1939. Section 21 of which read:

The Minister of Justice, if satisfied that, with a view to preventing any particular person from acting in a manner prejudicial to the public safety or the safety of the State, it is necessary to do so, may, notwithstanding anything in these regulations, make an order [...] directing that he be detained by virtue of an order made under this paragraph, be deemed to be in legal custody.

Internment of Jewish refugees

European refugees who had managed to escape the Nazis and made it to Britain, were rounded up as "enemy aliens" in 1940. Many were interned on the Isle of Man, and 2,300 were sent to Canada, mostly Jews. They were transported on the same boats as German and Italian POWs. They were sent to camps in New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec provinces where they were mixed in with Canadian fascists and other political prisoners, Nazi POWs, etc.

German Canadian internment

During the Second World War, 850 German Canadians were accused of being spies for the Nazis, as well as subversives and saboteurs. The internees were given a chance by authorities to defend themselves; according to the transcripts of the appeal tribunals, internees and state officials debated conflicting concepts of citizenship.

Many German Canadians interned in Camp Petawawa were from a nineteenth-century migration in 1876. They had arrived in a small area a year after a Polish migration landed in Wilno, Ontario. Their hamlet, made up of farmers primarily, was called Germanicus, and is in the bush less than 10 miles from Eganville, Ontario. Their farms (homesteads originally) were expropriated by the federal government for no compensation, and the men were imprisoned behind barbed wire in the AOAT camp. (The Foymount Air Force Base near Cormac and Eganville was built on this expropriated land.) Notable was that not one of these homesteaders from 1876 or their descendants had ever visited Germany again after 1876, yet they were accused of being German Nazi agents.

756 German sailors, mostly captured in East Asia were sent from camps in India to Canada in June 1941 (Camp 33).

By April 19, 1941, 61 prisoners had made a break for liberty from Canadian internment camps. The escapees included 28 German prisoners who escaped from the internment camp east of Port Arthur, Ontario in April, 1941.

Italian Canadian internment

On June 10, 1940, Italy joined the war on the axis side. After that, Italian Canadians were heavily scrutinized. Openly fascist organizations were deemed illegal while individuals with fascist inclinations were arrested most often without warrants. Organizations seen as openly fascist also had properties confiscated without warrants as well. A provision in the Canadian War Measures Act was immediately enacted by Prime Minister King. Named the Defense of Canada Regulations, it allowed government authorities to take the needed measures to protect the country from internal threats and enemies. The same afternoon which Italy joined the axis powers, Italian consular and embassy officials were asked to leave as soon as physically possible. Canada, which was heavily involved in the war effort on the allies' side, saw the Italian communities as a breeding ground of likely internal threats and a haven of conceivable spy networks helping the fascist axis nations of Italy and Germany. Though many Italians were anti-fascist and no longer politically involved with the homeland, this did not stop over 700 Italians from being sent to internment camps throughout Canada.

The main brunt of Italian prisoners were sent to Camp Petawawa situated in the Ottawa River Valley. By October 1940 the round up had already been completed. Italian Canadian Montrealer, Mario Duliani wrote, "The City Without Women" about his life in the internment camp Petawawa during World War II which describes a personal account of the struggles of the time. Throughout the country Italians were investigated by RCMP officials who had a compiled list of Italian persons who were politically involved and deeply connected in the Italian communities. Most of the arrested individuals were from the Montreal and Toronto areas and pronounced enemy aliens.

After the war, resentment and suspicion still lingered upon the Italian communities. Laval Fortier, commissioner for overseas immigration after the war wrote "The Italian South Peasant is not the type we are looking for in Canada. His standard of living, his way of life, even his civilization seem so different that I doubt if he could ever become an asset to our country". Such remarks embedded a large proportion of the country that had negative views upon the Italian communities. A gallop poll released in 1946 showed 73 percent of Québécois were against immigration with 25 percent stating Italians were the group of people most wanted kept out. Such a stance upon the Italian people was evident even though years prior to the war had proven Italians were an asset to the Canadian economy and industry, for they accomplished critical jobs that were seen as very unappealing such as laying track across rural and dangerous landscapes and the construction of infrastructure in urban areas.

Japanese internment and relocation centres

During World War II, Canada interned residents of Japanese ancestry. Over 75% were Canadian citizens and they were vital in key areas of the economy, notably the fishery and also logging and berry farming. Exile took two forms: relocation centres for families and relatively well-off individuals who were a low security threat, and internment 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 about 25% regained confiscated property and businesses. Most remained in other parts of Canada, notably certain parts of the British Columbia Interior and in the neighbouring province of Alberta.

Camps and relocation centres in the West Kootenay and Boundary regions

Internment camps, called "relocation centres", were at Greenwood, Kaslo, Lemon Creek, New Denver, Rosebery, Sandon, Slocan City, and Tashme. 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.

Self-supporting centres in the Lillooet-Fraser Canyon region

A different kind of camp, known as a self-supporting centre, was found in other regions. Bridge River, Minto City, McGillivray Falls, East Lillooet, Taylor Lake were in the Lillooet Country or nearby. Other than Taylor Lake, these were all called "Self-supporting centres", not internment camps. 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. 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, though Tashme had direct road access over that distance, unlike McGillivray. Because of the isolation of the country immediately coast-wards from McGillivray, men from that camp were hired to work at a sawmill in what has since been named Devine, after the mill's owner, which is within the 100-mile quarantine zone. Many of those in the East Lillooet camp were hired to work in town, or on farms nearby, particularly at Fountain, while those at Minto and Minto Mine and those at Bridge River worked for the railway or the hydro company.

Camps and relocation centres elsewhere in Canada

There were internment camps near Kananaskis, Alberta; Petawawa, Ontario; Hull, Quebec; Minto, New Brunswick; Amherst, Nova Scotia and St. John's, Newfoundland. About 250 people worked as guards at the Amherst, Nova Scotia camp at Park and Hickman streets from April 1915 to September 1919. The prisoners, including Leon Trotsky, cleared land around the experimental farm and built the pool in Dickey Park.

Chile

Concentration camps existed throughout Chile during Pinochet's dictatorship in the 1970s and 80s. An article in Harvard Review of Latin America reported that "there were over eighty detention centers in Santiago alone" and gave details of some. Information on detention centers is included in the Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation (Rettig report).

Some of the detention centers in Chile in this period:

China

Laogai was a word, short for "reform through labor", that referred to penal labour or prison farms in the People's Republic of China. The word itself was dropped in 1990 for "prison". In the 1960s, critics of the government were arrested and sent to the prisons which were organized like factories. There are accusations that the products of penal labor are sold and profit by the government.

The books of Harry Wu describe his experience in reform through labor prisons from 1956 to 1979. They say he was imprisoned for criticizing the government in college until he was released to the United States to become an activist. 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.

There are accusations that Chinese labor camps produce products which 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.

There have been reports of Falun Gong practitioners being detained at Sujiatun Thrombosis Hospital, or "Sujiatun Concentration Camp". It has been accused that Falun Gong practitioners are killed for their organs, which are then sold to medical facilities. The Chinese government rejects these allegations. US State Department visited the alleged camp on two occasions, first unannounced, and found the allegation not credible. Chinese dissident and Executive Director of the Laogai Research Foundation, Harry Wu, having sent his own investigators to the site, was unable to substantiate the claims, and believes the reports were fabricated.

Yugoslav wars

Kerestinec prison

Cuba

After Marshal Campos had failed to pacify the Cuban rebellion, the Conservative government of Antonio Cánovas del Castillo sent out Weyler. This selection met the approval of most Spaniards, who thought him the proper man to crush the rebellion. While serving as a Spanish general, he was called "Butcher Weyler" because hundreds of thousands of people died in his concentration camps.

He was made governor of Cuba with full powers to suppress the insurgency (rebellion was widespread in Cuba) and restore the island to political order and its sugar production to greater profitability. Initially, Weyler was greatly frustrated by the same factors that had made victory difficult for all generals of traditional standing armies fighting against an insurgency. While the Spanish troops marched in regulation and required substantial supplies, their opponents practiced hit-and-run tactics and lived off the land, blending in with the non-combatant population. He came to the same conclusions as his predecessors as well—that to win Cuba back for Spain, he would have to separate the rebels from the civilians by putting the latter in safe havens, protected by loyal Spanish troops. By the end of 1897, General Weyler had relocated more than 300,000 into such "reconcentration camps." Weyler learned this tactic from the American Civil War campaign of General Sherman while assigned to the post of military attaché in the Spanish Embassy in Washington D.C.. However, many mistakenly believe him to be to the origin of such tactics after it was later used by the British in the Second Boer War and later evolved into a designation to describe the concentration camps of the 20th century regimes of Hitler and Stalin. Although he was successful moving vast numbers of people, he failed to provide for them adequately. Consequently, these areas became cesspools of hunger and disease, where many hundreds of thousands died.

Weyler's "reconcentration" policy had another important effect. Although it made Weyler's military objectives easier to accomplish, it had devastating political consequences. Although the Spanish Conservative government supported Weyler's tactics wholeheartedly, the Liberals denounced them vigorously for their toll on the Cuban civilian population. In the propaganda war waged in the United States, Cuban émigrés made much of Weyler's inhumanity to their countrymen and won the sympathy of broad groups of the U.S. population to their cause. He was nicknamed "the Butcher" Weyler by journalists like William Randolph Hearst.

Weyler's strategy also backfired militarily due to the rebellion in the Philippines that required the redeployment by 1897 of some troops already in Cuba. When Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas del Castillo was assassinated in June, Weyler lost his principal supporter in Spain. He resigned his post in late 1897 and returned to Europe. He was replaced in Cuba by the more conciliatory Ramón Blanco y Erenas.

Military Units to Aid Production were forced labor concentration camps established by Fidel Castro's communist rule, from November 1965 to July 1968.

They were a way to eliminate alleged "bourgeois" and "counter-revolutionary" values in the Cuban population. First, people were thrown into overcrowded cells at police stations and later taken to secret police facilities, movie houses, stadiums, warehouses, and similar locations. They were photographed, fingerprinted and forced to sign a confession declaring themselves the "scum of society" in exchange for their temporary release until they were summoned to the concentration camps. Those who refused to sign were physically and psychologically tortured.

Beginning in November 1965, already classified people started to arrive by train, bus, truck and other police and military vehicles.

"Social deviants" such as homosexuals, vagrants, Jehovah's Witnesses and other religious missionaries were imprisoned in these concentration camps, where they would be "reeducated".

Before and during World War II

Horserød camp – established during World War I as a camp for war prisoners in need of treatment, used during World War II as an internment camp. It is now an open prison.

Frøslev Prison Camp – established during World War II as an internment camp by the Danish government in order to avoid deportation of Danish citizens to Germany. Used after the war to house Nazi collaborators and later students of a continuation high schools located inside the camp.

After World War II

Denmark received about 240,000 refugees from Germany and other countries after the war. They were put into camps guarded by the reestablished army. Contact between Danes and the refugees were very limited and strictly enforced. About 17,000 died in the camps caused either by injuries and illness as a result of their escape from Germany or the poor conditions in the camps. Known camps were

Dragsbæklejren – a base for seaplanes, later converted into an internment camp for refugees. It is now used by the army

Gedhus – located on an area which now is home to Karup Airport

Grove – located on an area which now is home to Karup Airport

Rye Flyveplads – a small airfield in Jutland

Kløvermarken – is now a park in Copenhagen

Oksbøl Refugee Camp – now belongs to the Danish Army

Skallerup Klit – was developed into an area for Summer houses

After 9-11 legislation has been introduced to cope with the new situation. As result of this the police can now detain people for 12 hours without charges being brought.

Valby Internment – an internment existing during the state of emergency laws introduced in relationship with the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 (COP15). It was closed shortly after the summit.

Finnish Civil War

In the Finnish Civil War, the victorious White Army and German troops captured about 80,000 Red prisoners by the end of the war on 5 May 1918. Once the White terror subsided, a few thousand including mainly small children and women, were set free, leaving 74,000–76,000 prisoners. The largest prison camps were Suomenlinna, an island facing Helsinki, Hämeenlinna, Lahti, Viipuri, Ekenäs, Riihimäki and Tampere. The Senate made the decision to keep these prisoners detained until each person's guilt could be examined. A law for a Tribunal of Treason was enacted on 29 May after a long dispute between the White army and the Senate of the proper trial method to adopt. The start of the heavy and slow process of trials was delayed further until 18 June 1918. The Tribunal did not meet all the standards of neutral justice, due to the mental atmosphere of White Finland after the war. Approximately 70,000 Reds were convicted, mainly for complicity to treason. Most of the sentences were lenient, however, and many got out on parole. 555 persons were sentenced to death, of whom 113 were executed. The trials revealed also that some innocent persons had been imprisoned.

Combined with the severe food shortage, the mass imprisonment led to high mortality rates in the camps, and the catastrophe was compounded by a mentality of punishment, anger and indifference on the part of the victors. Many prisoners felt that they were abandoned also by their own leaders, who had fled to Russia. The condition of the prisoners had weakened rapidly during May, after food supplies had been disrupted during the Red Guards' retreat in April, and a high number of prisoners had been captured already during the first half of April in Tampere and Helsinki. As a consequence, 2,900 starved to death or died in June as a result of diseases caused by malnutrition and Spanish flu, 5,000 in July, 2,200 in August, and 1,000 in September. The mortality rate was highest in the Ekenäs camp at 34%, while in the others the rate varied between 5% and 20%. In total, between 11,000 and 13,500 Finns perished. The dead were buried in mass graves near the camps. The majority of the prisoners were paroled or pardoned by the end of 1918 after the victory of the Western powers in World War I also caused a major change in the Finnish domestic political situation. There were 6,100 Red prisoners left at the end of the year, 100 in 1921 (at the same time civil rights were given back to 40,000 prisoners) and in 1927 the last 50 prisoners were pardoned by the social democratic government led by Väinö Tanner. In 1973, the Finnish government paid reparations to 11,600 persons imprisoned in the camps after the civil war.

WWII (Continuation War)

When the Finnish Army during the Second World War occupied East Karelia from 1941–1944, which was inhabited by ethnically related Finnic Karelians (although it never had been a part of Finland—or before 1809 of Swedish Finland), several concentration camps were set up for ethnically Russian civilians. The first camp was set up on October 24, 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. The ultimate goal was to move the Russian speaking population to German-occupied Russia in exchange for any Finnish population from these areas, and also help to watch civilians.

Population in the Finnish camps:

13,400 – December 31, 1941

21,984 – July 1, 1942

15,241 – January 1, 1943

14,917 – January 1, 1944

Algeria

During France's occupation of Algeria, its forces interned large numbers of Algerians in "tent cities" and concentration camps, both during the initial French invasion in the 1830s, and particularly during the Algerian War of Independence.

During the early part of the colonial period, the French used the camps to hold Arabs, Berbers and Turks they had forcibly removed from fertile areas of land, in order to 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. The war in general killed a third of Algeria's population.

During the Algerian War of Independence, the French incarcerated whole populations of villages who were suspected to have supported the rebel National Liberation Front (FLN).

Spanish Republicans

After the end of Spanish Civil War, there were harsh reprisals against Franco's former enemies. Hundreds of thousands of Republicans fled abroad, especially to France and Mexico. On the other side of the Pyrenees, refugees were confined in internment camps of the French Third Republic, such as the Rieucros Camp, Camp de Rivesaltes, Camp Gurs or Camp Vernet, where 12,000 Republicans were housed in squalid conditions (mostly soldiers from the Durruti Division). The 17,000 refugees housed in Gurs were divided into four categories (Brigadists, pilots, Gudaris and ordinary Spaniards). The Gudaris (Basques) and the pilots easily found local backers and jobs, and were allowed to quit the camp, but the farmers and ordinary people, who could not find relations in France, were encouraged by the Third Republic, in agreement with the Francoist government, to return to Spain. The great majority did so and were turned over to the Francoist authorities in Irún. From there they were transferred to the Miranda de Ebro camp for "purification".

After the proclamation by Marshal Philippe Pétain of the Vichy regime, the refugees became political prisoners, and the French police attempted to round-up those who had been liberated from the camp. Along with other "undesirables", they were sent to the Drancy internment camp before being deported to Nazi Germany. About 5,000 Spaniards thus died in Mauthausen concentration camp

Vichy France

During 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 de Rivesaltes, Camp Gurs and Camp Vernet. From these, the French cooperated in deporting about 73,000 Jews to Nazi Germany.

In addition, in areas which Germany formally annexed from France, such as Alsace-Lorraine, concentration camps were built, the largest being Natzweiler-Struthof.

The Vichy French also ran camps in North and West Africa, and possibly French Somaliland and Madagascar. The following are the locations of concentration camps, POW camps, and internment camps in (Vichy) West and (Vichy) North Africa:

The camps were located at:

West Africa:

Conakry

Timbuctoo

Kankan

Koulikorro, Mali

Dakar

North Africa:

Sfax

El Kef

Laghouat

Geryville.

Also camps connected to the Laconia incident:

Mediouna (near Casablanca)

Qued-Zen, Morocco (near Casablanca)

Sidi-el-Avachi, Morocco (near Azemmour)

The following camps which are under investigation:

Taza

Fes

Oujda

Sidi-bel-Abbes

Berguent

Settat

Sidi-el-Ayachi

Qued Zem

Mecheria

The camps at Conakry, Timbuctoo, and Kankan had no running water, no electricity, no gas, no electric light no sewers, no toilets, and no baths. The prisoners (mainly British and Norwegian) were housed in native accommodation - mud huts and houses, and a tractor shed. The Vichy French authorities in West Africa called these camps "concentration camps".

German South West Africa, 1904–1908

Between 1904 and 1908, following the German suppression of the Herero and Nama in the Herero and Namaqua genocide, survivors were interned at the following locations in German South-West Africa (now Namibia):

Shark Island Concentration Camp

Windhoek Concentration Camp

Okahandja Concentration Camp

Karibib

Swakopmund Concentration Camp

Omaruru

Luderitz

World War I

In World War I male (and some female) civilian nationals of the Allies caught by the outbreak of war on the territory of the Germany were interned. The camps (Internierungslager) included those at:

Ruhleben, for up to 4,500 internees, on a horse race-track near Berlin.

Holzminden in Lower Saxony, for up to 10,000 internees.

Havelberg, in Saxony-Anhalt, for 4,500 internees, including nearly 400 British Indians.

Celle Castle in Lower Saxony.

Rastatt Camp, for French civilians.

The Third Reich

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. Within days the first concentration camp (Konzentrationslager), at Dachau, Nazi Germany, 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 Heinrich Himmler on 4 July 1934. By 1934 there were eight major institutions. 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.

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. 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 who had not already been executed. Many of these intellectuals were held first in Gestapo prisons, and those who were not executed immediately after interrogation were sent on to the concentration camps.

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 labour in industries, but usually transported to work then returned to the KZ or the ghetto at night. Although these ghettoes were not intended to be extermination camps, and there was no official policy to kill people, thousands died due to hunger, disease and extreme conditions. 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. To accomplish this special Vernichtungslager (extermination camps) were 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 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. Approximately 12,000,000 forced laborers, most of whom were Eastern Europeans, were employed in the German war economy inside the Nazi Germany. Although conditions were harsh and food and medical care inadequate, they were not concentration camps. More workers died in them from Allied bombs (often, prisoners were condemned to digging up and defusing unexploded Allied bombs as a matter of punishment for stealing extra rations of food) 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). 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. These civilians 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 Third Geneva Convention. 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.

Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre

Hong Kong

During the Second World War the Japanese, during their occupation of Hong Kong, interned enemy nationals (mostly British, Canadian, American and Dutch), in several internment camps in Hong Kong. Camps existed at:

Sham Shui Po - A concentration camp was maintained here for most of the duration of the Second World War.

Stanley Internment Camp - Located primarily on the grounds of St. Stephen's College. Shortly after surrendering, the Imperial Japanese Army broke into the St. Stephen's (which had served as a military hospital during the battle) and murdered the wounded soldiers of the Allied forces. The Japanese later merged the College with part of Stanley Prison to form the full Stanley Internment Camp.

Stanley Prison - Located primarily in the Officer's housing blocks at the prison. During the Japanese occupation, the grounds of the prison were used as part of Stanley Internment Camp. Nearly 600 prisoners of war and civilians, killed by the Japanese during the occupation, are buried in the nearby Stanley War Cemetery (which is NOT part of the prison itself but adjacent to it).

British-India

During both World Wars the British interned enemy nationals (mostly Germans). In 1939 this also included refugees from the Nazis as well as Germans who had acquired British citizenship, in India. Camps existed at:

World War I

Ahmednagar, also for internees from German East Africa; Sections A abysmally overcrowded with more than 1000 inmates in "medically condemned" old barracks and B for privileged (read: monied) prisoners and officers. In 1915 a parole camp was set up.

Diyatalawa (Ceylon)

Belgaum for women; set up late 1915; March 1917: 214 inmates

Kataphar for families

World War II

Ahmednagar (Central Internment Camp) inmates transferred to Dehradun February 1941.

Diyatalawa (Ceylon). Aliens from Ceylon, Hong Kong and Singapore. Many German sailors, 756 of them sent to Canada in June 1941 (Camp 33); other males to Dehradun, females to parole camps, when camp was closed 23. February 1942

Deolali from Feb. 1941, later also transferred to Dehradun. 11 August 1941: 604 Germans.

Dehradun main camp for males from September 1941. Sensibly separated in Wings 1: pro-Nazi, 2: anti-Nazi, 3: Italians. From this camp the SS mountaineer Heinrich Harrer escaped to Tibet.

Yercaud for females from Madras Presidency. Summer 1941: 98 inmates, closed late 1942.

Ft. Williams (Calcutta), army camp, closed early 1940, males were sent to Ahmednagar, females to Katapahar parole camp.

Camp 17 initially in Ramgarh (Bihar), from July 1942 at Deoli (Rajputana). For the surviving internees from the Dutch Indies.

Hazaribagh: in then Bihar; now in Jharkhand

Smaller Parole Camps at Naini Tal, Kodaikanal and Katapahar (near Darjeeling), were all closed by late 1942. Inmates transferred to (family reunions) to the camps near Poona:

Satara from May 1940

Purandhar (lower Fort), initially for Jewish refugees, later also other Germans, many missionaries with families. In August 1945 116 Germans (45 children, 19 missionaries), 26 Italians (5 children), 68 other nationals (11 children)

Most internees were deported late 1946. Germans shipped to Hamburg were sent to the former Neuengamme concentration camp for de-Nazification.

Ireland

The HMS Argenta, during the 1920s, was a vessel used as a military base and prison ship for the holding of Irish Republicans by the British government as part of their internment strategy.

By February 1923, under the 1922 Special Powers Act the British were detaining 263 men on the Argenta, which was moored in Belfast Lough. This was supplemented with internment at other land based sites such as Larne workhouse, Belfast Prison and Derry Gaol. Together, both the ship and the workhouse alone held 542 men without trial at the highest internment population level during June 1923.

Conditions on the prison ship Argenta were "unbelievable" says author Denise Kleinrichert who penned the hidden history of the 1920s' floating gulag.

Cloistered below decks in cages which held 50 internees each, the prisoners were forced to use broken toilets which overflowed frequently into their communal area. Deprived of tables, the already weakened men ate off the contaminated floor, frequently succumbing to disease and illness as a result.

Courtesy of author Denise Kleinrichert's lobbying efforts, the files of all the internees—most of them named in an appendix to her book—are now available for viewing at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.

During World War II, known in Ireland as the "Emergency", "K-Lines" was the part of the Curragh Camp used as an internment camp. It was used to house German soldiers, mainly navy personnel stranded in neutral Ireland. A separate section was created for Allied military, mostly British soldiers, who entered Irish territory in violation of the neutrality policy. No.1 Internment camp, that had been built by the British pre-1922, held republicans who had a suspected link to the I.R.A.

Later in the war, Gormanston Camp, near Balbriggan, was used to house eleven Allied airmen from operational flights but eight were released in June 1944, in 1945 three Germans were kept there for a short period.

Japanese World War II camps in Asia

For information in Dutch on Japanese concentration camps see Jappenkamp (Dutch)

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. Some Dutch women were forced into sexual slavery.

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. Korean POWs of the Japanese were also used as camp guards. 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. Boys over the age of ten were generally considered to be men by the Japanese and were often separated from their mothers to live and work in male camps.

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 Santo Tomas Internment Camp. 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 on Berhala Island in Sandakan Harbour and Batu Lintang camp, Kuching, Three Came Home (1947), was one of the first of the memoirs. More recent publications include Jeanne Tuttle and Jolanthe Zelling's "Mammie's Journal of My Childhood" (2005); (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.

Korea

During the 1980s, Korea had multiple internment camps, including Brothers Home, which housed thousands of prisoners in Busan.

Libya

The history of Libya as Italian colony started in the 1910s and lasted until February 1947, when Italy officially lost all the colonies of the former Italian Empire.

Fighting intensified after the accession to power in Italy of the dictator Benito Mussolini and King Idris fled Libya to Egypt in 1922. From 1922 to 1928, Italian forces under General Badoglio waged a punitive pacification campaign. Badoglio's successor in the field, Marshal Rodolfo Graziani (known as 'The Butcher of Fezzan'), accepted the commission from Mussolini on the condition that he was allowed to crush Libyan resistance unencumbered by the restraints of either Italian or international law. Mussolini reportedly agreed immediately and Graziani intensified the oppression. The Libyans continued to defend themselves, with the strongest voices of dissent coming from the Cyrenaica. Omar Mukhtar, a Senussi sheikh, became the leader of the uprising.

Soon afterwards, the colonial administration began the wholesale deportation of the people of Cyrenaica to deny the rebels the support of the local population. The forced migration of more than 100,000 people ended in concentration camps in Suluq- ALa byer and Al Agheila where tens of thousands died in squalid conditions. It is estimated (by Arab historians) that the number of Libyans who died - killed either through combat or mainly through starvation, execution and disease - is at a minimum of 80,000 or even up to one third of the Cyrenaican population.

Montenegro

The fort on the island of Mamula was converted into a concentration camp by the fascist forces of Benito Mussolini's Kingdom of Italy.

During the 1991 to 1995 Croatian War of Independence, the Yugoslav People's Army organized the Morinj camp near Kotor, Montenegro.

Netherlands

During WWI, all foreign soldiers and ship crews that illegally entered the neutral Netherlands were interned in a specific camp based on their nationality (to avoid conflict). By far the largest camp was the one for British sailors and soldiers in Groningen. Unlike the PoWs at the time in the neighbouring countries, Dutch prisoners had plenty of food, and tradesmen often came to the camp with a wide range of goods. The interned were paid a certain amount of compensation money by the Dutch authorities on top of any British aid that got channeled to them through the Dutch government. One prisoner later commented: "... we were quite well off, and the local people were very good to us."

After a revolt in 1926 in the Dutch East Indies, a concentration camp for political prisoners was set up in what then was called Netherlands New Guinea, in the very remote jungle at Boven-Digoel (Upper-Digul).

Just before World War II engulfed the Netherlands, a camp was built in 1939 at Westerbork by the Dutch government for interning Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi Germany. During the German occupation this camp was used as a transit camp for Dutch Jews eventually deported to extermination camps in the East. Amersfoort (1941–1945) (in German: Polizeiliches Durchgangslager) was also a transit camp. The Herzogenbusch camp (1943–1944, known as Kamp Vught because of its location in that town) was a concentration camp, the only one in Western Europe outside Germany set up as well as run by the SS.

Other camps were camp Schoorl near Schoorl and camp Erika near Ommen. Before the Shoah began, some two dozen labor camps for Jewish men were operated fulfilling an order of the German occupiers. In the Dutch East Indies, after the occupation of the Netherlands by the Germans in Europe started on 15 May 1940, Germans living in the Indies were rounded up and interned there. Almost all camps also had field offices for forced labor. In the case of Vught as well as Amersfoort work details for Philips factories existed, often under relatively favourable circumstances. Also, the huge construction activities for the 30 German airfields in the Netherlands relied partly upon labour from camps.

After the war, the Dutch government launched the Operation Black Tulip and started to gather civil population of German background to concentration camps near the German border, especially Nijmegen, in order to deport them from the country. In total around 15% of the German population in the Netherlands was deported.

Numerous improvised and official camps were set up after the war, to keep Dutch who were suspected of collaboration with the Germans. Kamp Westerbork at one point housed some Jews as well as suspected collaborators and Germans. In these camps, a history of maltreatment by the guards, sometimes leading to death, has been collected.

New Zealand

In World War I German civilians living in New Zealand were interned in camps on Motuihe and Somes Islands. German, Italian and Japanese civilians were interned in World War II.

Norway

During World War II, the Beisfjord massacre took place at the "No. 1 camp Beisfjord" (Lager I Beisfjord ).

North Korea

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 large facilities. Additional camps were established later 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, but some were closed and merged into the remaining six for better secrecy and control.

North Korea is known to operate six concentration camps, currently accommodating around 200,000 prisoners. These camps, officially called Kwan-li-so (Korean for "control and management center"), are large political penal-labor colonies in secluded mountain valleys of central and northeastern North Korea. Once condemned as political criminals in North Korea, the defendant and his or her family (even little children and old people) 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 ideological re-education. Starvation, torture and disease are commonplace. Political criminals invariably receive life sentences.

Kang Chol-hwan is a former prisoner of Yodok concentration camp and has written a book (The Aquariums of Pyongyang) about his time in the camp. Shin Dong-hyuk is the only person known to have escaped from Kaechon concentration camp and gave an account of his time in the camp.

Ottoman Empire (20th century)

Concentration camps known as Deir ez-Zor Camps operated in the heart of the Syrian desert during 1915-1916, where many thousands of Armenian refugees were forced into death marches during the Armenian Genocide. The United States vice-consul in Aleppo, Jesse B. Jackson, estimated that Armenian refugees, as far east as Deir ez-Zor and south of Damascus, numbered 150,000, all of whom were virtually destitute.

Paraguay

Shortly before his absolute 26-year rule of Paraguay, in 1813 Dr.Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, then vice-consul of Paraguay, ordered the construction of the concentration camp of Tevego, situated on the Bolivian frontier bordering the Chaco to the west, and an endless marsh to the east. It was guarded by a squadron of mulatto lancers, but was unable to fend off constant attacks from Indians, leading to its eventual abandonment in 1823.

Poland

From 1934 to 1939 Poland established a camp for the internment of political opponents, Ukrainian nationalists and Communists in Bereza Kartuzka (now in Belarus).

Bereza Kartuska Detention Camp

During World War II Nazi Germany established many of its concentration camps in Poland. After World War 2 the Soviet Army and Communist government of Poland used some of the former German concentration camps as POW camps and later as internment camps where Polish opponents of the Communists and Soviets, as well as Ukrainians and ethnic Germans or their sympathizers, were imprisoned.

Central Labour Camp Potulice

Central Labour Camp Jaworzno

Zgoda labour camp

Łambinowice

Attempts were later made to bring two of the camp commandants to justice; Salomon Morel and Czesław Gęborski. Gęborski spent in prison 22 months and died during a process.

Russia and the Soviet Union

Syretzk concentration camp in the outskirts of Kiev.

Darnitza concentration camp. "Over 68,000 Soviet prisoners of war and peaceful citizens."

In Imperial Russia, labor camps were known by the name katorga.

First Soviet camps were organized in June 1918 for Czechoslovak soldiers. Solovki prison camp existed since 1923.

In the Soviet Union, labour penitentiary camps were called simply camps, almost always plural ("lagerya"). These were used as forced labor camps, and had small percentages of political prisoners. After Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's book they became 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. In all, perhaps more than 18,000,000 people passed through the Gulag in 1929-1953, with further millions being deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union.

Of the 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war captured by the Germans, 3.5 million had died while in German captivity by the end of the war. The survivors on their return to the USSR were treated as traitors (see Order No. 270). Over 1.5 million surviving Red Army soldiers imprisoned by the Germans were sent to the Gulag.

After World War II, some 3,000,000 German soldiers and civilians were sent to Soviet labor camps, as part of war reparations by labor force. Less than 1,000,000 returned to Germany.

An extensive list of Gulag camps is being compiled based on official sources.

Serbia

During World War II (operated by German Gestapo):

Banjica concentration camp (near Belgrade)

Sajmište concentration camp (near Belgrade)

Topovske Šupe (in Belgrade)

Milišić's brickyard (in Belgrade)

Crveni krst (in Niš)

Dulag 183 (in Šabac)

Svilara (Pančevo)

Paraćin

During the Yugoslav Wars:

Aleksinac camp

Beograd VIZ

Niš camp

Novi Sad camp

Sombor camp

Sremska Mitrovica prison (in Sremska Mitrovica)

Stajićevo camp

Šid camp

During the Kosovo War (operated by KLA):

Lapušnik prison camp, (near Glogovac)

Slovakia

During the Second World War, the Slovak government made a small number (Nováky, Sereď) of transit camps for Jewish citizens. They were transported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Ravensbrück concentration camps. For German help with Aryanization of Slovakia, the Slovak government paid a fee of 500 Reichsmark for each Jew.

Spain

Although the first modern concentration camps used to systematically dissuade rebels from fighting are usually attributed to the British during the Boer War, in the Spanish–American War, forts and camps were used by the Spanish in Cuba to separate rebels from their agricultural support bases. Upwards of 200,000 Cubans died by disease and famine in these environments.

There were also Francoist concentration camps.

Sri Lanka

In 1900, the British War Office constructed a concentration camp in Diyatalawa to house Boer prisoners captured in the Second Boer War. Initially constructed to house 2,500 prisoners and 1,000 guards and staff, the number of prisoners increased to 5,000.

In late 2008, as the Sri Lankan civil war drew to a close, the Sri Lankan Government established a number of camps to hold displaced people who managed to escape the war zone. Between October 2008 and May 2009 290,000 displaced people were moved into the camps in government controlled territory. These camps were guarded by the Sri Lankan military and surrounded by barbed wire. The displaced people were not allowed to leave the camps and aid agencies were not allowed inside the camps. The camps were described as internment camps by some NGO's, journalists and aid workers.

The conditions in the camps were below minimum humanitarian standards. There were reports of rape, torture, disappearances and arbitrary detention within the camps. In early May 2009, days before the civil war ended, the government gave assurances that over 80% of the displaced people would be resettled by the end of 2009. As the government failed to honour this commitment international concern grew over the slow pace of resettlement. The resettlement process accelerated in late 2009 but it was not until September 2012, four years after they were established, the camps were officially closed.

Sweden

During the Second World War, the Swedish government operated eight internment camps.

The most famous is probably Storsien outside Kalix in Norrbotten where about 300–370 communists, syndicalists and pacifists were kept during the winter 1939–1940. Other camps were

Naartijärvi east of Luleå

Öxnered at Vänersborg

Grytan outside Östersund

Bercut, a boat for sailors outside Dalarö

Vindeln: constructed in Västerbotten in 1943

Stensele: constructed in Västerbotten in 1943

Lövnäsvallen outside Sveg

In May 1941 a total of ten camps for 3,000–3,500 were planned, but towards the end of 1941 the plans were put on ice and in 1943 the last camp was closed down. All the records were burned. After the war many of those who had been put in the camps had trouble finding work as few wanted to hire "subversive elements".

The navy had at least one special detainment ship for communists and "troublemakers".

Most of the camps were not labour camps with the exception of Vindeln and Stensele where the internees were used to build a secret airbase.

Foreign soldiers were put in camps in Långmora and Smedsbo, German refugees and deserters in Rinkaby. After the Second World War three camps were used for Baltic refugees from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (including 150 Baltic soldiers) at Ränneslätt, Rinkaby and Gälltofta.

Switzerland

During World War II more than 100,000 mainly Allied soldiers were interned in Switzerland. Internees from England, France, Poland and Russia, and Italians and Germans who fled combat, the Swiss government had to – unlike civilians, for instance Jews refugees, who usually were sent back to the territories occupied by the Nazi regime – keep these soldiers interned until the end of the hostilities, in line to the Geneva Convention of 1929. The soldiers were held in barracks, and they were used as workers for agriculture and industry, except the officers who not were compelled to forced labour and stayed in unoccupied mountain hotels, mainly in Davos. The Swiss government operated during World War II in Switzerland at least three internment camps:

Wauwilermoos internment camp was an internment respectively a Prisoner-of-war camp, situated in the municipalities of Wauwil and Egolzwil in the Canton of Luzern. Established in 1940, Wauwilermoos was a penal camp for internees, priorly for Allied soldiers, among them members of the United States Army Air Forces, who were sentenced for attempting to escape from other Swiss camps for interned soldiers, or other offenses. The intolerable conditions at the Wauwilermoos prison camp were later described by numerous former inmates, by various contemporary reports and studies. especially the imposed extremely harsh detention conditions.

Hünenberg;

Les Diablerets.

In addition, there was as number of regularly internment camps.

Bermuda

During the Second Boer War, several small islands in Bermuda's Great Sound were used as natural concentration camps, despite protest from the local government. 4,619 Boers were interned on these islands, compared to Bermuda's total population of around 17,000; at least 34 Boers died in transit to Bermuda.

Channel Islands

Alderney 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 (named 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.

Cyprus

After World War II, British efforts to prevent Jewish emigration into their Palestine Mandate led to the construction of internment camps in Cyprus where up to 30,000 Holocaust survivors were held at any one time to prevent their entry into the country. They were released in February 1949 after the founding of Israel.

England

During World War I Irish republicans were imprisoned in camps in Shrewsbury and Bromyard.

During World War II, 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. The British government rounded up 74,000 German, Austrian and Italian aliens. 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 later 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.

Ireland: pre-1922

During the Irish war of independence of 1919 to 1921, 12,000 Irish people were held without trial.

Isle of Man

During World War I the British government interned male citizens of the Central Powers, principally Germany, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey. They were held mainly in internment camps at Knockaloe, close to Peel, and a smaller one near Douglas.

During World War II the Isle of Man was used as the primary site for the internment of civilian enemy aliens, both male and female. The camps were predominantly in commandeered hotels and boarding houses in seaside towns on the island. Around the camps for males, barbed wire fences were erected and military guard was brought over from England. The low-risk internees were, however, allowed to work on farms on the island and to go on excursions such as for walks or to swim in the sea. The camps were in operation from 27 May 1940 to 5 September 1945. The largest recorded number of internees on the island was roughly 14,000, reached in August 1940. There were ten camps on the island:

Mooragh Camp, Ramsey

Peveril Camp, Peel

Onchan Camp, Onchan

Rushen Camp, Port St Mary and Port Erin (for female and family internees only)

Central Camp, Douglas

Palace Camp, Douglas

Metropole Camp, Douglas

Hutchinson Camp, Douglas

Granville Camp, Douglas

Sefton Camp, Douglas

Kenya

During 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.

Malaya

Beginning in 1950, under the Briggs' Plan (a response to the Malayan Emergency) Chinese squatters were relocated to hundreds of internment camps in various areas of the Malay Peninsula. Known as New Villages, these camps were intended to become permanent settlements. As attacks by the Malayan Communist Party declined, the curfews were lifted, fences removed, and the camps gradually ceased to be internment camps. To this day many villages founded in this way are known as New Villages and remain ethnically Chinese.

Northern Ireland

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 Irish Republicans were arrested by the British Army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary on the orders of 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. Many of the people arrested were completely unconnected with the Provisional IRA but, through bungling and incompetence, had their names appear on the list of those to be interned, while 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 then called Long Kesh Detention Centre. 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, member of British Parliament (Anti H-Block/Armagh Political Prisoner Party.) His death resulted in a new surge of IRA recruitment and activity. 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 detention facility located at RAF Long Kesh military base, later known as Long Kesh Detention Centre and eventually becoming Her Majesty's Prison Maze, 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.

South Africa

The term concentration camp was first used by the British military during the Boer War (1899–1902). Facing attack by Boer guerrillas, British forces rounded up the Boer women and children as well as black people living on Boer land, and sent them to 34 tented camps scattered around South Africa. Altogether, 116,572 Boers were interned, roughly a quarter of the population. This was done as part of a scorched earth policy to deny the Boer guerrillas access to the supplies of food and clothing they needed to continue the war.

The camps were situated at Aliwal North, Balmoral, Barberton, Belfast, Bethulie, Bloemfontein, Brandfort, East London, Heidelberg, Heilbron, Howick, Irene, Kimberley, Klerksdorp, Kroonstad, Krugersdorp, Merebank, Middelburg, Norvalspont, Nylstroom, Pietermaritzburg, Pietersburg, Pinetown, Port Elizabeth, Potchefstroom, Springfontein, Standerton, Turffontein, Vereeniging, Volksrust, Vredefort, Vryburg and Winburg.

Though they were not extermination camps, the women and children of Boer men who were still fighting were given smaller rations than others thus causing mass starvation. The poor diet and inadequate hygiene led to 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, during the war the British, Colonial and South African forces' casualties included 5,774 killed in action and 13,250 deaths from disease, while the Boers' casualties in the Transvaal and Orange Free State up to December 1901, included 2640 killed in action and 945 deaths from disease.

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.

During World War I, South African troops invaded neighboring German South-West Africa. German settlers were rounded up and sent to concentration camps in Pretoria and later in Pietermaritzburg.

Wales

During World War I, there was a concentration camp in Frongoch, Merionethshire. First German POWs were held here until 1916, then 1,800 Irish political prisoners were held there following the Easter Rising, including Michael Collins. The prisoners were very poorly treated and Frongoch became a breeding ground for Irish revolutionaries.

Indigenous people

The first large-scale confinement of a specific ethnic group in detention centers began in the summer of 1838, when President Martin Van Buren ordered the U.S. Army to enforce the Treaty of New Echota (a Native American removal treaty) by rounding up the Cherokee into prison camps before relocating them. Called "emigration depots", the three main ones were located at Ross's Landing (Chattanooga, Tennessee), Fort Payne, Alabama, and Fort Cass (Charleston, Tennessee). Fort Cass was the largest, with over 4,800 Cherokee prisoners held over the summer of 1838. Many died in these camps due to disease, which spread rapidly because of the close quarters and bad sanitary conditions: see the Trail of Tears.

Throughout the remainder of the Indian Wars, various populations of Native Americans were rounded up, trekked across country and put into detention, some for as long as 2 years.

The United States – Dakota Indian War of 1862 resulted in the loss of life, fear, suffering and hardship for early Minnesotan citizens while disproportionately harming the Dakota and other indigenous people who found themselves on either side of the conflict, much like the concurrent Civil War. Former Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey decreed on September 9, 1862 that "the Sioux Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state" leading to the forced removal and banishment of the indigenous people who would surrender and to the government-sanctioned bounties that would be awarded for the scalps of any fleeing or resisting indigenous person.

On December 26, 1862 thirty eight Dakota warriors, including We-Chank-Wash-ta-don-pee (often called Chaska), who was pardoned, were hanged with the label of murderers and rapists of civilians rather than ‘war criminals’ in the largest mass execution in United States history at the order of President Abraham Lincoln, with the remaining 361 prisoners being sent to segregated prison camps in other states just days before the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.

Approximately 1,700 Dakota women, children and elderly were force-marched to a fenced concentration camp near the base of Fort Snelling which was built on the Dakota sacred area called 'Bdote' where the Mississippi River and Minnesota Rivers meet. Here the women were separated from the men before being exiled to reservations in neighboring states and Canada. These reservations tended to disregard Native American culture and traditions and their children were placed in boarding schools, which focused on European-based culture and religions.

American Civil War

The Andersonville Prison, and Libby Prison during the Civil War were used as prisons, resembling concentration camps utilized by the Confederacy for Union soldiers.

After the Civil War (and during the war), millions of freed Black people were funneled into concentration camps near Union army bases where conditions were unsanitary and food was limited. Many were killed through forced starvation, and other means. The most notorious of these instances took place in Nachez, Mississippi, also referred to as the Devil's Punchbowl. The death camp was established after freed Black individuals fled to Natchez after being emancipated.

Philippines

On December 7, 1901, during the Philippine–American War, General J. Franklin Bell began a concentration camp policy in Batangas—everything outside the "dead lines" was systematically destroyed: humans, crops, domestic animals, houses, and boats. A similar policy had been quietly initiated on the island of Marinduque some months before.

Japanese-, German-, Italian-Americans and Native Alaskans during World War II

In reaction to the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan in 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt under United States Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942 allowed military commanders to designate areas "from which any or all persons may be excluded." Under this order all Japanese and Americans of Japanese ancestry were removed from Western coastal regions to concentration camps in Arkansas, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, and Idaho; German and Italian citizens, permanent residents, and American citizens of those respective ancestries (and American citizen family members) were removed from (among other places) the West and East Coast and relocated or interned, and roughly one-third of the US was declared an exclusionary zone.

Fort Lincoln, North Dakota internment camp opened in April 1941 and closed in 1945. It had a peak population of 650. Today (2014) it houses the United Tribes Technical College. Some CCC barracks buildings and two brick army baracks were fenced and used to house the internees. The first ones were Italian and German seamen. 800 Italians arrived, but soon were sent to Fort Missoula in Montana. The first Japanese American Issei arrived in 1942, but were also transferred to other camps. The Germans were left as the only internees there until February 1945, but then 650 more Japanese Americans were brought in, these being ones who had renounced their U.S. citizenship and were waiting to be sent back to Japan. The brick buildings remain but others are gone. There is a newspaper article from The Bismarck Tribune, March 2, 1946 that 200 Japanese were still being held at Fort Lincoln.

Oklahoma housed German and Italian POW's at Fort Reno, located near El Reno, and at Camp Gruber, near Braggs, Oklahoma.

Almost 120,000 Japanese Americans and resident Japanese aliens would eventually be removed from their homes and relocated.

About 2,200 Japanese living in South America (mostly in Peru) were transported to the United States and placed in internment camps.

Approximately 5,000 Germans living in several Latin American republics were also removed and transported to the United States and placed in internment camps. In addition at least 10,905 German Americans were held in more than 50 internment sites throughout the United States and Hawaii.

Alaska Natives living in the Aleutian Islands were also interned during the war; Funter Bay was one such camp.

Vietnam

From 1961 to 1963, US military advisers directed the creation of thousands of new, tightly controlled villages or "strategic hamlets". While in some cases these settlements were relatively voluntary, they generally were a form of internment camp.

Afghan War and the occupation of Iraq

In 2002, the United States of America opened an internment and detention camp in Cuba called Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, and opened another internment and detention camp in Afghanistan called Bagram Theater Internment Facility. Both facilities were established in order to detain people captured during the Afghan War. In 2003, in order to detain people captured during the Occupation of Iraq, the United States transformed an Iraqi prison into an internment and detention camp commonly referred to as Baghdad Central Prison or Abu Ghraib Prison.

Due to the American government's policy of holding detainees indefinitely, a number of captives have been held for extended periods without being legally charged, including Ayman Saeed Abdullah Batarfi who was captured in 2001 and released from Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp in 2009. A document leaked from the International Committee of the Red Cross was published by The New York Times in November 2004, which accused the U.S. military of cruelty "tantamount to torture" against detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay facility. Human rights group Amnesty International referred to Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp as "the Gulag of our times," in May 2005.

In September 2006, after a series of abuses including the rape and murder of prisoners was reported to the public, control of Baghdad Central Prison was given to Iraqis. Subsequent investigative reports suggest that the United States continued to directly influence and oversee a campaign of torture carried out inside Iraqi facilities even after the handover of Iraq and related facilities was finalized. In March 2013 it was revealed that American officials, under pressure from Afghan officials, reached an agreement after more than a year of negotiations to hand over control of Bagram Theater Internment Facility to the Afghan government. In the deal, Bagram Theater Internment Facility, called "The Other Guantanamo" by human rights groups after reports of systematic abuse, was renamed the Afghan National Detention Facility at Parwan. Additionally, the agreement extended authority for American officials to have say over which detainees could be released from the facility, containing guarantees from the Afghan government that certain detainees would not be released regardless of whether or not they could be tried for circumstances related to their individual detentions. The Afghans formally took over control of other day-to-day operations. Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp remains open and fully operated by Americans.

Vietnam

While initially a form of prisoner-of-war camp, the government of Vietnam's reeducation camps were greatly expanded after the fall of Saigon. An estimated 1-2.5 million people were imprisoned with no formal charges or trials.

Nazi camps

During the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia (1941–1944), as many as 70 Nazi concentration camps were formed in Yugoslavia. Main victims in these camps were ethnic Serbs, Jews and Roma. It is estimated that between 1 million and 1.7 million people in Yugoslavia fell as victims of the Nazi occupation.

List of the camps:

Communist camps

In 1931, 499,969 citizens of Yugoslavia listed their native language as German and they comprised 3.59% of population of the country. In 1944, an unknown and disputed number of the Danube Swabians left the country, together with the defeated German army. As a result of the decisions of the Anti-fascist Council of national liberation of Yugoslavia ("Antifašističko veće narodnog oslobođenja Jugoslavije" - AVNOJ) in Jajce on 21 November 1943 and on 21 November 1944 in Belgrade all legal rights and citizenship were collectively canceled for about 168,000 civilian members of the Danube Swabian minority who remained in Yugoslavia (mostly in the Bačka and Banat regions) after military defeat of the German army. Furthermore, they were fully dispossessed of all property. About 7,000 German-speaking citizens were killed by the local Yugoslav partisans in the autumn of 1944. Most of the other Danube Swabian civilians were interned and driven into numerous labor and at least eight prison camps, which had been built for those unable to work: the old, sick, children under the age of 14 and mothers with small children under age 2 or 3.

These camps for the sick, elderly, children, and those unable to work were:

In the Bačka:

Bački Jarak with 7,000 deaths

Gakovo with 8,500 deaths

Kruševlje with 3,000 to 3,500 deaths

In the Banat:

Molin with 3,000 deaths

Knićanin with 11,000 deaths

In Syrmia:

"Svilara", silk factory in Sremska Mitrovica with 2,000 deaths

In Slavonia:

Valpovo with 1,000 to 2,000 deaths

Krndija with 500 to 1,500 deaths

A total of 48,447 of the interned Danube Swabians died over three years from starvation, cold, and disease in the labor and prison camps. Nearly 35,000 succeeded in risking the escape routes from the camps into nearby Hungary and Romania. Beginning in the summer of 1946, thousands of orphaned children were taken forcibly from the camps into children's homes. Most were returned to their families by the International Red Cross ICRC over the next decade. In addition more than 8,000 women between 18 and 35 years and over 4,000 men between 16 and 45 years were deported to forced labor in the USSR at the end of the year 1944 and the beginning of 1945 from the Bačka and Banat regions of Yugoslavia.

Camps were disbanded in 1948 and Yugoslav citizenship was recognized for the remaining Danube Swabians. In 1948, 57,180 Germans lived in Yugoslavia. In the next decades, most of them emigrated to Germany.