Difference Between Concentration & Extermination Camps
Although the terms are frequently used interchangeably, concentration camps and extermination camps have historically served different purposes. Both are known widely for their harsh and inhumane conditions. Yet a few famous historical examples point out that to be a prisoner of one is not the same as being a prisoner in the other.
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Purpose
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Concentration camps are sites of internment for prisoners of war and politics. These camps serve the purpose of allowing governments to control and immobilize large groups of people that are perceived to be threatening to society. On the other hand, extermination camps are known as killing centers. While concentration camps provide a solution for controlling a mass of people, extermination camps are built for eliminating them. In the latter, there is no regard for preserving the lives of the prisoners.
Prisoners' Life
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Life at a concentration camp is much different than life for those in extermination camps. Military power is used forcefully at concentration camps to control the prisoners' lives, including what they eat, where they sleep and how they work. As was the case in the incarceration of Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor, victims live in dire conditions where health care, adequate nutrition and safety are often lacking or disregarded. Indirectly, these conditions killed many prisoners. For prisoners at an extermination camp, the experience is far more short-lived. Historically, detainees are either killed upon or soon after arrival or worked to death.
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Secrecy
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Governments work hard to conceal the irreversible damage caused by both concentration camps and extermination camps. In some cases, concentration camps are given other names, including "refugee camps" or "areas of political protection." These misleading names help distract from their actual purpose. Extermination camps are kept top secret by powerful regimes, as the Nazis did during the Holocaust. In this case, as people were murdered, other prisoners were assigned to the disposal of corpses. Once these camps were closed, their grounds were often revamped through landscaping so as to keep the operation under wraps.
Aftermath
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Following their internment in concentration camps, targeted populations have experienced irreconcilable trauma. Long-lasting psychological issues are one example of this trauma, since victims' lives were forcefully controlled. Once victims are released, they often struggle to fit into the same society that had previously imprisoned them. By contrast, there is no life for those who are murdered in an extermination camp. Targeted populations often annihilate their own ethnic traits following these operations so as not to become a target in the future.
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References
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