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Path: utzoo!utcsri!utai!nunes
From: nunes@utai.UUCP (Joe Nunes)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Concentration Camps
Message-ID: <1008@utai.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Dec-85 10:08:36 EST
Article-I.D.: utai.1008
Posted: Thu Dec  5 10:08:36 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Dec-85 13:53:45 EST
References: <620@sftig.UUCP> <3630030@csd2.UUCP> <979@utai.UUCP> <1462@ihlpg.UUCP>
Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto
Lines: 26

> > [J. Nunes]
> > Regarding current talk on concentration camps in Northern Ireland vs.
> > concentration camps in Nazi Germany: There were two types of camps installed
> > in Germany during Nazi rule. Concentration camps, which were basically jails
> > (like I assume the one in Northern Ireland is). And extermination camps, which
> > had the function the name implies. Through time the term "concentration camp"
> > has taken the connotation of both.
> -------
> Mr. Nunes is only partially correct.  There was a real distinction between
> the two types of camps in Nazi Germany, but during the war many tens of
> thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of prisoners in CONCENTRATION
> camps (e. g. Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, etc.) were deliberately worked
> or starved to death.  There is no comparison to Northern Ireland, even if
> we ignore the EXTERMINATION camps (Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno,
> Belzec).
> -- 
> Bill Tanenbaum - AT&T Bell Labs - Naperville IL  ihnp4!ihlpg!tan

Yes, you are right. Conditions in concentration camps in Nazi Germany were
infinitely worse than those in Northern Ireland. I was only trying to point
out that the idea behind them was essentially the same (locking away
undesirables), and that extermination wasn't a primary function of Nazi
*concentration* camps. I was in no way implying that those camps weren't
horribly cruel, or alternatively that that cruelty was being duplicated in
Northern Ireland. Reading over my posting again I realize that I should have
made that point clear.