Quoted message said:Aren't concentration camps a British invention?
I don't think so, and this is why:
"Causes of the War
Demands by Cuban patriots for independence from Spanish rule made
U.S. intervention in Cuba a paramount issue in the relations between
the United States and Spain from the 1870s to 1898. Sympathy for the
Cuban insurgents ran high in America, especially after the savage
Ten Years War (1868-78) and the unsuccessful revolt of 1895. After
efforts to quell guerrilla activity had failed, the Spanish military
commander, Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, instituted the reconcentrado,
or concentration camp, system in 1896; Cuba's rural population was
forcibly confined to centrally located garrison towns, where thousands
died from disease, starvation, and exposure."
http://www.bartleby.com/65/sp/SpanAmWar.html
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0846162.html
Etc.
1896 is four years before Kitchener's use of camps in South
Africa during the Second Anglo Boer War.
Here's a description of the Spanish camps taken from a Speech
by a US Senator, reproduced in Clara Barton's THE RED CROSS.
http://www.amigospais-guaracabuya.org/oagld003.php
"Every town and village is surrounded by a trocha (trench) a sort of
rifle
pit, but constructed on a plan new to me, the
dirt being thrown up on the inside and a barbed wire fence
on the outer side of the trench."
Feature No. 1: barbed wire fence
"These trochas have at every corner, and at frequent intervals along
the
sides, what are there called forts, but which are
really small block-houses, many of them more like a large sentry box,
loop-holed for musketry, and with a guard of from two to ten
soldiers in each. The purpose of these trochas is to keep
reconcentrados in as well as to keep the insurgents out. "
Feature No. 5: guard towers
"From all the surrounding country the people have been driven into
these
fortified towns and held there to subsist as they can."
Feature No. 3: neglect of civilians collected from rural areas
"They are virtually prison yards and not unlike one in general
appearance,
except that the walls are not so-high and strong,
but they suffice, where every point is in range of a soldier's
rifle, to keep in the poor reconcentrado women and children."
Feature No. 4: sentries
"Every man, woman and child and every domestic animal, wherever their
columns have reached, is under guard and within their so-
called fortifications. To describe one place is to describe all. To
repeat, it is neither peace nor war."
Feature No. 6: imprisonment of civilians
"It is concentration and desolation. This is the "pacified" condition
of
the four western provinces."
"All the country people in the four western provinces, about 400,000
(at
least 50% or 200,000 see below would die of star-
vation and disease L.D)"
Feature No. 2: massive mortality due to starvation and/or disease.
Feature No. 7: centralisation around rail junctions to facilitate
collection.
The idea that the British invented concentration camps comes from
Dr. Goebbels:
Robertson, Patrick. "The Book of Firsts," Clarkson N. Potter,
Inc., New York, 1974, p. 44.
"The idea that the British 'invented' concentration camps was fostered
by
Dr. Goebbels during the 1930s. In 1938 Nazi propaganda picture
postcards,
formerly sold as 'genuine Russian concentration camp scenes', were
relabelled for issue as 'genuine British concentration camp scenes in
South Africa'."
This was to embarrass British critics of the Nazi concentration camps
into silence. [censored] went one better, claiming the Nazi camps were
based the British Boer War camps: this is also a lie. The Nazi
concentration camps were based on German colonial camps used to
exterminate the Herreros in South West Africa. The latter camps
were called 'konzentrationslagers', were justified by a racist
ideology that would not be out of place in Voelkischer Beobachter,
and were overseen by Herman Goering's dad.
Unfortunately two British journalists decided to translate the
Spanish name for these camps into English, so we typically
hear that the Second Ango-Boer was the first time the term
"concentration camp" was used in the English language, as if
that was the first time concentration camps were ever used.
The Spanish camps killed of ca. 200,000 people - four times as
many as died in the Boer War camps - yet the former are almost
unknown despite the massive publicity given them at the time.
I think it is worth remembering there is a world of difference between
a
British concentration camp and a Nazi concentration camp. British
people are kind and generous.
THE GREAT ANGLO-BOER WAR by Byron Farwell
ISBN 0-393-30659-3
This is a Brit concentration camp (1900)
"They lived in a way that used to make the brutal soldier's mouth water
when he came into town after trekking. Our food in the Mounted
Infantry was generally good enough, but we never had shelter.... These
persecuted people, however, were living in cool, roomy marquees and
were paid for
doing things for themselves. Thus if they wanted an oven to bake their
bread in the men made one and got paid for it."
Standing Orders to the superintendents of the Transvaal camps-
"There must be no stinting in the distribution of medical comforts
to the sick and convalscent, old and infirm people and young children.
When necessary, stimulants may be freely given under doctor's orders.
There must be an adequate supply of milk, which should be liberally
applied to children and deserving people, as well as the sick and
convalescent."
ibid, page 407.
"Medical stimulants supplied at Bloemfontein camps in Oct 1901
Champagne 32 bottles
Brandy 171 bottles
Port wine 73 bottles
Claret 29 bottles
Stout 19 bottles
Whiskey 19 bottles
"In spite of all the champagne, brandy, whiskey, and tinned milk,
the children continued to die. Typhoid killed one in five inmates who
came down with it; pneumonia one in three. Between 1st Sept 1901
and the end of the year, one person out of every ten died."
"the Boers in the camps were certainly given enough to eat. The
problem was that their diet was deficient in essential vitamins. This
was an age that knew little about community resistance to disease,
still
less about nutrition and virtually nothing about vitamins."
"The rations issued were those served out to regular soldiers in
garrison, but what the uncomplaining Tommies meekly accepted the Boer
civilians complained of bitterly--with good reason. Ater the war
Kitchener
said, "I consider that the soldier was better fed than in any previous
campaign" but civilian politicians had not realised how bad the food
was
they served to soldiers. For the first time it occurred to those in
authority that the rations of the British army were excreable.
"People in institutions, particularly when they have little to do,
always complain about the food, even when it is good. In the
concentration
camps the food was neither good nor plentiful, and certainly did not
make
for a balanced diet[2]. Still, no-one died from starvation. The
amount
of food issued varied from camp to camp; in the Transvaal and in Natal
the meat ration was usually four pounds per adult per week; in the
Orange
Free State it was three and a half pounds per week. When Milner took
over
the camps he ensured the diet was more varied"
This is a Nazi camp.
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Holocaust/Ravensbruck.html
"Beginning in 1942, medical experiments were performed on the inmates;
some women were infected with gas gangrene or bacterial inflammations,
while others were forced to receive bone transplants and bone ampu-
tations. Other experiments involved sulfonamide and sterilization
techniques. Pregnant Jewish women were sent to the gas chambers,
while abortions were performed on non-Jews."
"The Soviets liberated the camp on April 29-30, 1945, and found another
3,500 female prisoners living at the camp. It is estimated that 50,000
women died at Ravensbrueck, either from harsh living conditions, slave
labor or were put to death."
http://www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/RavensbruckEng.html
"Hundreds of children were incarcerated in Ravensbrueck. The cruelty
and
the sadism of the Nazis against the children had no limits, and the
fate of those little victims was absolutely awful. Children and babies
were in fact sentenced to death before they were born. Newborn babies
were immediately separated from their mother and drowned or thrown
into
a sealed room until they died. Most of the time, this was done in
front
of the mother. There are dozen of testimonies about children thrown
alive into the crematory, buried alive, poisoned, strangled, or
drowned
in Ravensbrueck. Several children were also used for sadistic
"medical"
experiments. Hundreds of little girls, sometimes only 8, were
sterilized
by direct exposure of genitals to X-rays. In the early months of
Ravensbrueck, children were immediately killed. The SS doctor
Rosenthal
and his girlfriend Gerda Quernheim aborted by force pregnant women,
and this was often done using bestial methods. Later, newborn children
were sometimes allowed to survive, but due to the lack of food and the
awful sanitary conditions, these babies died very soon."
"Only the strongest children could survive. Those children had to work
day and night with the women in the workshop and help them with the
heaviest labor. Only very few of these children survived the war. "