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Why is the BBC referring US concentration camps as "internment camps"?
by pera 3y ago
Why is the BBC referring US concentration camps as "internment camps"?
- padjo 3y agoBecause that’s what they’re called? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camps https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camps
- pera 3y agoThat article doesn't seem right, or at least some academics seem against the use of "internment camp" in this case: https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2012/02/10/146691773/euphemisms-concentration-camps-and-the-japanese-internment https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2012/02/10/1466917...
- capableweb 3y agoConcentration camps and interment camps are synonymous, they mean the same thing. One is not "better" or "easier" than the other, so not sure why it'd matter.
- quickthrowman 3y agoThey’re referring to them as internment camps as to not equivocate the (admittedly bad) camps where Japanese-American citizens were held with the industrialized genocide of Nazi German concentration camps. Imprisoning Japanese Americans during WWII was very wrong, but it wasn’t anywhere near the abject horror of Nazi concentration camps. The words are generally synonyms, but I think the distinction is important.
- candiodari 3y agoBecause in Europe concentration camps are used to refer to Germany's extermination camps for Jews, Prisoners of War and children. So an alternate name needs to be found for a different thing.
- pera 3y agoThe term "extermination camp" is more precise for that case.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> Because in Europe concentration camps are used to refer to Germany's extermination camps for Jews, Prisoners of War and children. “Concentration camps” existed before WWII, at least back to the Boer War. The US “internment camps” were concentration camps in the usual historical sense. In the case of the German exterminatiom camps, “concentration camp” was a euphemism.
- ianburrell 3y agoNazi concentration camps and extermination camps were two very different places. Extermination camps killed people. Concentration camps are where people lived and were worked to death. The extermination camps were usually next to concentration camps, where the survivors could live to work in the extermination camp. Some of the confusion is that the complexes are called "concentration camp" like Auschwitz which had 40 individual concentration and extermination camps. Probably because the concentration camps came first and exterimination camps were added on.