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One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps
A powerful exploration of the evolution of a harrowing phenomenon that forever changed the landscape of conflict in the twentieth century: the concentration and work camps
Concentration camps--the preemptive communal detention of innocent civilians--first took foothold in Cuba in the late 1800s when Spain's Captain General Valeriano Weyler drove a half million Cuban refugees into makeshift camps, ultimately killing over 100,000 of them through starvation and disease. Although Teddy Roosevelt and President McKinley condemned such tactical atrocities, the U.S. would establish concentration camps of its own in the Philippines just two years later, leading to the deaths of 11,000 people. These colonial experiments paved the way for the worldwide internment of foreigners during World War I, followed by the extreme horrors of Nazi Germany and the Gulag. Yet greater consciousness and condemnation proved ineffective during the post-war years, as China and Korea soon adopted camps of their own, and the British continued their use overseas. Even Guantanamo Bay, established in 1898 partially in response to the savage abuses of the first camps, echoes their philosophy today in the detention of prisoners who have not been charged.
Far from being an exclusively World War II tool for perpetrating genocide, camps have existed for more than 100 years, recurring with appalling frequency. Shocking, powerful, and necessary, One Long Night seeks to answer the question of how these atrocities continued through the years after worldwide exposure, condemnation, and the solemn promise of "never again."
Concentration camps--the preemptive communal detention of innocent civilians--first took foothold in Cuba in the late 1800s when Spain's Captain General Valeriano Weyler drove a half million Cuban refugees into makeshift camps, ultimately killing over 100,000 of them through starvation and disease. Although Teddy Roosevelt and President McKinley condemned such tactical atrocities, the U.S. would establish concentration camps of its own in the Philippines just two years later, leading to the deaths of 11,000 people. These colonial experiments paved the way for the worldwide internment of foreigners during World War I, followed by the extreme horrors of Nazi Germany and the Gulag. Yet greater consciousness and condemnation proved ineffective during the post-war years, as China and Korea soon adopted camps of their own, and the British continued their use overseas. Even Guantanamo Bay, established in 1898 partially in response to the savage abuses of the first camps, echoes their philosophy today in the detention of prisoners who have not been charged.
Far from being an exclusively World War II tool for perpetrating genocide, camps have existed for more than 100 years, recurring with appalling frequency. Shocking, powerful, and necessary, One Long Night seeks to answer the question of how these atrocities continued through the years after worldwide exposure, condemnation, and the solemn promise of "never again."
464 pages, Hardcover
First published September 19, 2017
212 people are currently reading
3473 people want to read
About the author
Andrea Pitzer
6 books223 followersI'm the author of Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World (2021), One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps (2017), and The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov (2013).
My writing has appeared many places in print and online, from the Washington Post and New York Review of Books to Outside, Slate, Vox, USA Today, and GQ. I founded Nieman Storyboard, the narrative nonfiction site for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
I've spoken about my work at the 92nd Street Y, Smithsonian Associates, Yale, Dartmouth, and many other places. I live in Virginia, just outside Washington, DC.
My writing has appeared many places in print and online, from the Washington Post and New York Review of Books to Outside, Slate, Vox, USA Today, and GQ. I founded Nieman Storyboard, the narrative nonfiction site for the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
I've spoken about my work at the 92nd Street Y, Smithsonian Associates, Yale, Dartmouth, and many other places. I live in Virginia, just outside Washington, DC.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 95 reviews
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May 17, 2023Update 2 All camps from the beginning in "New Spain" in the 16thC to the present, are about people who don't fit in either racially, politically or religiously. Sometimes it is also about people who might be useful slave labour - Nazis, North Korea, Russians and Chinese in particular. Sometimes it is about murder, but more rarely, firstly the Armenians in Turkey, and then the Nazis industrialised and streamlined murder, theft from bodies and disposal of the corpses in the Holocaust.
I have a long review (by main countries in the history of camps) I want to write, but I've used a lot of space here, not sure how to do it, where to put it. Any ideas?
__________
Update 1 I've had to skip the chapter on German concentration camps. I can remember being very young and at my grandmother's and she was playing bridge and the conversation between them was of the family who didn't make it, who had disappeared from Poland, Lithuania, Russia and how after the war when they tried to trace them, people had just taken over their houses and possessions.
But, distressing as some of it is, Guantanamo especially since it is easy to identify with as being right-now and we know who is imprisoning these detainees-without-charge-or-trial and torturing them (although they aren't any worse than the Cubans themselves it seems) I'm going to finish the book. And I will be glad to be done with it. It is a catalog of the very worst humans can be towards each other deliberately, coldly and with much malice aforethought.
__________
Political philosopher Hannah Arendt described concentration camps as divided into Purgatory, Hades, and Hell, moving from the netherland of internment to labor camps of the Gulag and Nazi death factories. But nearly all concentration camps share one feature: they extract people from one area to house them somewhere else.
It sounds like a simple concept, but both elements are distinct and important. Camps require the removal of a population from a society with all its accompanying rights, relationships, and connections to humanity. This exclusion is followed by an involuntary assignment to some lesser condition or place, generally detention with other undesirables under armed guard.
Of these afterworlds, Arendt writes, “All three types have one thing in common: the human masses sealed off in them are treated as if they no longer existed, as if what happened to them were no longer of interest to anybody, as if they were already dead and some evil spirit gone mad were amusing himself by stopping them for a while between life and death.”"
The book starts with the Spanish post-Columbus in the New World. Communities were razed and he people relocated into mission compounds policed by the military and run by Franciscans, Jesuits and Dominicans who 'civilized' the Indians by converting them to Christianity and their own way of life. At this time was the Valladolid Debate of 1550, "A formal argument over whether Indians were human beings or 'natural slaves'." Meanwhile, typhus, smallpox, overcrowding and filth were killing the Indians in the mission compounds. Very like concentration camps in practice if not in philosophy.
The Spanish were cruel. Indians being natural slaves, the Inquisition burning to death people who would not convert to Christianity (neither of these things seem to be at all Christian), and of course slavery of Africans.
I have a long review (by main countries in the history of camps) I want to write, but I've used a lot of space here, not sure how to do it, where to put it. Any ideas?
__________
Update 1 I've had to skip the chapter on German concentration camps. I can remember being very young and at my grandmother's and she was playing bridge and the conversation between them was of the family who didn't make it, who had disappeared from Poland, Lithuania, Russia and how after the war when they tried to trace them, people had just taken over their houses and possessions.
But, distressing as some of it is, Guantanamo especially since it is easy to identify with as being right-now and we know who is imprisoning these detainees-without-charge-or-trial and torturing them (although they aren't any worse than the Cubans themselves it seems) I'm going to finish the book. And I will be glad to be done with it. It is a catalog of the very worst humans can be towards each other deliberately, coldly and with much malice aforethought.
__________
Political philosopher Hannah Arendt described concentration camps as divided into Purgatory, Hades, and Hell, moving from the netherland of internment to labor camps of the Gulag and Nazi death factories. But nearly all concentration camps share one feature: they extract people from one area to house them somewhere else.
It sounds like a simple concept, but both elements are distinct and important. Camps require the removal of a population from a society with all its accompanying rights, relationships, and connections to humanity. This exclusion is followed by an involuntary assignment to some lesser condition or place, generally detention with other undesirables under armed guard.
Of these afterworlds, Arendt writes, “All three types have one thing in common: the human masses sealed off in them are treated as if they no longer existed, as if what happened to them were no longer of interest to anybody, as if they were already dead and some evil spirit gone mad were amusing himself by stopping them for a while between life and death.”"
The book starts with the Spanish post-Columbus in the New World. Communities were razed and he people relocated into mission compounds policed by the military and run by Franciscans, Jesuits and Dominicans who 'civilized' the Indians by converting them to Christianity and their own way of life. At this time was the Valladolid Debate of 1550, "A formal argument over whether Indians were human beings or 'natural slaves'." Meanwhile, typhus, smallpox, overcrowding and filth were killing the Indians in the mission compounds. Very like concentration camps in practice if not in philosophy.
The Spanish were cruel. Indians being natural slaves, the Inquisition burning to death people who would not convert to Christianity (neither of these things seem to be at all Christian), and of course slavery of Africans.
December 23, 2017
{Both my father and grandfather were detained in concentration camps during the holocaust in Hungary.} One Long Night is an excellent book of documentation of concentration camps, includes a section of interesting photos. Thank you Goodreads for this free book!!!!!
October 9, 2018
Well-researched, brilliant, and soul crushing. I appreciate the author made no attempt to sugar coat history yet begs the reader to pay attention to acts past and present. Everyone should read this book.
June 18, 2018
The protection and support we get from our civilization is tissue thin. With the right set of circumstances, a concentration camp is waiting for us all. Horrifying.
November 17, 2018
I would like to start with a few quotes which capture what Pitzer is trying to get across:
"Honorable people can do terrible things" (p. 403).
"The use of concentration camps changes the world, but going forward, the most predictable outcome of their use is a world with more camps" (p. 400).
"Even isolated from the world, covered up, and left behind, all the camps for more than a century were filled with bodies: bodies that failed the detainees, bodies that saved them, bodies that hounded them" (p. 403).
I never expected this book to be an easy one to read, or one that offered a great deal of hope for the future of human nature. However, I suppose I did not expect the history of concentration camps to have extended as far back as the late 1800s, nor did I think them to be used as widely - or as broadly defined - as they have been. By almost every country, in circumstances of war, peace, and sometimes with the blessing of a democratic nation. With the most recent example moving between the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar and the 9/11 detainees in Guantanamo and briefly touching on the use of concentration camps in Calais and other countries for immigrants and refugees, the scope of this book focuses on the origins of the concentration camp and ends with no definitive chapter - they are still being used.
The chapters are manageable, with firsthand accounts and a wide variety of resources and scholarship documented. The author moves between one or two central stories for each chapter, along with research detailing and corroborating the narrative.
I had not heard of concentration camps used during WWI, and I only had a vague knowledge of their use in early and mid-century by colonizing countries to restrain populations, torturing often anyone who "may" be involved with insurgency or freedom movements. Here the author's broad scope is helpful, moving from South American camps (Chile and Argentina feature mostly) to Asian camps (Cambodia, Myanmar, North Korea, China, Japan's camps during WWII, tactics in Vietnam) and yes, including the camps and tactics used by the US. She discusses how media and government blackouts continue to plague the flow of information - what is truth? What are the real numbers?
Considering that the Khmer Rouge leadership's massacre of the Cambodian people in the 1970s was just yesterday (16 November 2018) labeled an orchestrated genocide, this book is more timely than ever.
Considering the news of how migrants and immigrants are treated worldwide, including on the US's southern border with Mexico, with the large caravan still heading north, this book is more timely than ever.
Considering the use of camps won't stop unless humans, unless governments decide to stop using them, this book is more timely than ever.
"Even from the vantage point of outer space, it is still impossible to take it all in. There is always a location out of view, on the far side of the globe, where the innocent and the guilty and those in between have been trapped together for a time, for now, or forever. Old camps reopen, new ones are born. No final chapter can be written yet for the chronic spectacle of the camps" (pg. 409).
"Honorable people can do terrible things" (p. 403).
"The use of concentration camps changes the world, but going forward, the most predictable outcome of their use is a world with more camps" (p. 400).
"Even isolated from the world, covered up, and left behind, all the camps for more than a century were filled with bodies: bodies that failed the detainees, bodies that saved them, bodies that hounded them" (p. 403).
I never expected this book to be an easy one to read, or one that offered a great deal of hope for the future of human nature. However, I suppose I did not expect the history of concentration camps to have extended as far back as the late 1800s, nor did I think them to be used as widely - or as broadly defined - as they have been. By almost every country, in circumstances of war, peace, and sometimes with the blessing of a democratic nation. With the most recent example moving between the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar and the 9/11 detainees in Guantanamo and briefly touching on the use of concentration camps in Calais and other countries for immigrants and refugees, the scope of this book focuses on the origins of the concentration camp and ends with no definitive chapter - they are still being used.
The chapters are manageable, with firsthand accounts and a wide variety of resources and scholarship documented. The author moves between one or two central stories for each chapter, along with research detailing and corroborating the narrative.
I had not heard of concentration camps used during WWI, and I only had a vague knowledge of their use in early and mid-century by colonizing countries to restrain populations, torturing often anyone who "may" be involved with insurgency or freedom movements. Here the author's broad scope is helpful, moving from South American camps (Chile and Argentina feature mostly) to Asian camps (Cambodia, Myanmar, North Korea, China, Japan's camps during WWII, tactics in Vietnam) and yes, including the camps and tactics used by the US. She discusses how media and government blackouts continue to plague the flow of information - what is truth? What are the real numbers?
Considering that the Khmer Rouge leadership's massacre of the Cambodian people in the 1970s was just yesterday (16 November 2018) labeled an orchestrated genocide, this book is more timely than ever.
Considering the news of how migrants and immigrants are treated worldwide, including on the US's southern border with Mexico, with the large caravan still heading north, this book is more timely than ever.
Considering the use of camps won't stop unless humans, unless governments decide to stop using them, this book is more timely than ever.
"Even from the vantage point of outer space, it is still impossible to take it all in. There is always a location out of view, on the far side of the globe, where the innocent and the guilty and those in between have been trapped together for a time, for now, or forever. Old camps reopen, new ones are born. No final chapter can be written yet for the chronic spectacle of the camps" (pg. 409).
October 7, 2017
The lesson that was taught and taught again but not learned in the postwar era of concentration camps was that emergency laws in combination with demonization of military or political opposition led to a downward spiral and systemic atrocity. Moreover, when these counterinsurgency tactics appeared to succeed, they tended to deliver only temporary victory and in fact exacerbated the larger crises that initially triggered the conflict.
A survey of concentration camps interspersed with the stories of those who survived them. The stories aren't meant to be representative of the experience as a whole, because the author notes survivors were generally among the privileged, often with access of some kind to the outside world.
The books explores:
Spanish camps in Cuba, American camps in the Philippines, British camps in South Africa during the Boer War, alien detention camps throughout Europe in WW1, Soviet gulags (there's a heartbreaking story about a Jewish woman who was deported from a gulag to Nazi Germany, where she ended up in a worse camp), Nazi camps from forced labor camps to extermination camps (Hannah Arendt's story is maybe the best in the book), other camps in Europe and North America throughout WW2, Camps in post-war Asia: Maoist China, North Korea (includes a survey of recent DPRK defection literature, with a weird justification for including the partially fabricated memoir Escape from Camp 13) and Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge, the revanchism of later colonialism (British in Kenya, French in Algeria and Indochina), Right Wing South American camps in Chile and Argentina, and finally modern camps: America's Guantanamo Bay and the internally displaced persons camps for the Rohingya in Myanmar (with mentions of France's Calais and Australia's Nauru refugee camps).
Pitzer does a great job of bringing the horrors of concentration camps home, with the Khmer Rouge and Guantanamo in particular. The format of the book, looking at the history of camps across the world rather than focusing on any one regime, left me constantly comparing the camps, asking which is worse. The Nazis were worst, obviously, but the fight for second place is fierce and there are too many factors to consider. I don't think it's a useful impulse, but I couldn't stop myself.
Also, very weird to me that Andersonville was left out. She mentions it in her introduction, but dismisses it (and the American carceral state and North American indigenous reserves) as not fitting the bill. The later two I can see as deviating too far, but surely Andersonville meets the definition of a concentration camp? EDIT: The author pointed out on twitter it's because Andersonville was for POWs, not civilians. The reasoning is given in the book, but I didn't pick up on it until it was pointed out to me. Makes sense.
Still, good book: worth your time.
Highlights:
The author has a great eye for dark humour:
Canadian camps (no mention of our internment of Japanese, but she gets Trotsky in Nova Scotia):
A bit skeptical of this claim:
For anyone using the Trump horror show to feel nostalgia for the Bush 43 admin:
2017 hell world:
A survey of concentration camps interspersed with the stories of those who survived them. The stories aren't meant to be representative of the experience as a whole, because the author notes survivors were generally among the privileged, often with access of some kind to the outside world.
The books explores:
Spanish camps in Cuba, American camps in the Philippines, British camps in South Africa during the Boer War, alien detention camps throughout Europe in WW1, Soviet gulags (there's a heartbreaking story about a Jewish woman who was deported from a gulag to Nazi Germany, where she ended up in a worse camp), Nazi camps from forced labor camps to extermination camps (Hannah Arendt's story is maybe the best in the book), other camps in Europe and North America throughout WW2, Camps in post-war Asia: Maoist China, North Korea (includes a survey of recent DPRK defection literature, with a weird justification for including the partially fabricated memoir Escape from Camp 13) and Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge, the revanchism of later colonialism (British in Kenya, French in Algeria and Indochina), Right Wing South American camps in Chile and Argentina, and finally modern camps: America's Guantanamo Bay and the internally displaced persons camps for the Rohingya in Myanmar (with mentions of France's Calais and Australia's Nauru refugee camps).
Pitzer does a great job of bringing the horrors of concentration camps home, with the Khmer Rouge and Guantanamo in particular. The format of the book, looking at the history of camps across the world rather than focusing on any one regime, left me constantly comparing the camps, asking which is worse. The Nazis were worst, obviously, but the fight for second place is fierce and there are too many factors to consider. I don't think it's a useful impulse, but I couldn't stop myself.
Also, very weird to me that Andersonville was left out. She mentions it in her introduction, but dismisses it (and the American carceral state and North American indigenous reserves) as not fitting the bill. The later two I can see as deviating too far, but surely Andersonville meets the definition of a concentration camp? EDIT: The author pointed out on twitter it's because Andersonville was for POWs, not civilians. The reasoning is given in the book, but I didn't pick up on it until it was pointed out to me. Makes sense.
Still, good book: worth your time.
Highlights:
The author has a great eye for dark humour:
Canadian camps (no mention of our internment of Japanese, but she gets Trotsky in Nova Scotia):
A bit skeptical of this claim:
For anyone using the Trump horror show to feel nostalgia for the Bush 43 admin:
2017 hell world:
October 16, 2018
CW: Concentration camps
One Long Night follows survivors' first hand experience through concentration camps from the mid 1800's through 2017. This book was /highly/ educational as, prior to reading this book, I had only known about the holocaust. I found it particularly interesting to learn how the intensity of concentration camps worsened over time.
I'd recommend both taking breaks after reading chapters of this book and interleaving reading another, happier book with this one. The horror documented in this book is well worth reading but requires pacing.
One Long Night follows survivors' first hand experience through concentration camps from the mid 1800's through 2017. This book was /highly/ educational as, prior to reading this book, I had only known about the holocaust. I found it particularly interesting to learn how the intensity of concentration camps worsened over time.
I'd recommend both taking breaks after reading chapters of this book and interleaving reading another, happier book with this one. The horror documented in this book is well worth reading but requires pacing.
August 21, 2021
What I learned from this book is basically that concentration camps are a universal human heritage…
June 13, 2018
When we think or talk about concentration camps, we often and understandably limit our focus to the atrocities of Nazi Germany, which cannot be overstated. Yet that program did not arise in a vacuum, and in this book, author Andrea Pitzer traces the concept of mass civilian detention from its modern origin in 1896 Cuba over the course of the next century and beyond. As she documents in heartrending detail, nearly every major country on earth has at one point or another engaged in the practice, which continues today with the 100+ foreign nationals the U.S. is still holding without trial in Guantanamo Bay and the estimated 80,000 citizens presently interred by their government in North Korea. With scholarly analysis and personal survivor narratives, Pitzer shows how every such policy of concentration, no matter how well-intentioned, inevitably gives rise to abuse and inhumane conditions. It's a devastating read that should force an uncomfortable reckoning from anyone who has supported such measures in the past.
March 6, 2018
"The last moment in time when no concentration camps existed was more than a century ago; that moment seems unlikely to come again." This history is as important now as it ever was.
July 23, 2019
This is an engrossing and important book. Journalist Andrea Pitzer has written a story of concentration camps from their origins at the very end of the 19th century through the beginnings of the 21st. Only the Nazis had technological death factories bent on genocide, but extrajudicial mass detention of civilians in the modern sense started in Cuba shortly before the Spanish-American war and was indeed one of the justifications for it -- the sinking of the Maine was the spark but the horrors of the camps for "reconcentración" provided much of the moral force. And yet, though we ostensibly opposed the camps, the idea was so useful that we had our own camps in the Philippines before you could blink.
Pitzer traces the idea and the institution from its origins through colonialist wars in Africa, enemy alien camps in the two world wars, the horrors of the Nazi camps, America's Japanese internment camps, the gulags, Asian communist reeducation camps, repression of African freedom movements, anticommunist repression in South America, and finally Guantánamo and the other camps of the US "war on terror". She catalogs the gradations and varieties -- simple detention, starvation, disease, torture, labor camps, and extermination camps. Each chapter covers another place, time, and stage in the development of camps. In most chapters, she weaves information from the experiences of one or a few individual camp survivors with the larger sweep of historical information. Some of the events she covers I knew about in detail -- there was relatively little new to me in the chapter on the Nazi camps -- but others I knew only as phrases (the Mau Mau rebellion, for instance), or not at all. It's all riveting and important and the news sounds very different to me now that I have read it.
Highly recommended.
Pitzer traces the idea and the institution from its origins through colonialist wars in Africa, enemy alien camps in the two world wars, the horrors of the Nazi camps, America's Japanese internment camps, the gulags, Asian communist reeducation camps, repression of African freedom movements, anticommunist repression in South America, and finally Guantánamo and the other camps of the US "war on terror". She catalogs the gradations and varieties -- simple detention, starvation, disease, torture, labor camps, and extermination camps. Each chapter covers another place, time, and stage in the development of camps. In most chapters, she weaves information from the experiences of one or a few individual camp survivors with the larger sweep of historical information. Some of the events she covers I knew about in detail -- there was relatively little new to me in the chapter on the Nazi camps -- but others I knew only as phrases (the Mau Mau rebellion, for instance), or not at all. It's all riveting and important and the news sounds very different to me now that I have read it.
Highly recommended.
March 26, 2024
*3,75
No velmi zevrubná kniha, která zachycuje dějiny jedné z nejhorších věcí lidstva. Zamýšlí se, kdy, kde a proč vůbec vznikla. Jak to vypadalo. Je překvapivé, jak je to hluboké. Jak se lidé dokáží předhánět v krutosti. Je mnoho psychologických faktorů, které odhalují zajímavé věcí. Kniha rozhodně stojí za přečtení. Je rozsáhlá. Nicméně, když vezmu Studenou válku, byť šlo o jiné téma, četla se mi lépe. Byla podána zajimavěji. Lépe uměla připoutat čtenáře, takže proto 3,75. Jde o rozsáhlé a hutné čtení, které rozhodně není pro každého. Nicméně, když už čtete o těch různých románech o koncentrácích, možná by stálo za to přijít, kde se vzaly a že byly třeba i v Jugošce nebo v Africe.
No velmi zevrubná kniha, která zachycuje dějiny jedné z nejhorších věcí lidstva. Zamýšlí se, kdy, kde a proč vůbec vznikla. Jak to vypadalo. Je překvapivé, jak je to hluboké. Jak se lidé dokáží předhánět v krutosti. Je mnoho psychologických faktorů, které odhalují zajímavé věcí. Kniha rozhodně stojí za přečtení. Je rozsáhlá. Nicméně, když vezmu Studenou válku, byť šlo o jiné téma, četla se mi lépe. Byla podána zajimavěji. Lépe uměla připoutat čtenáře, takže proto 3,75. Jde o rozsáhlé a hutné čtení, které rozhodně není pro každého. Nicméně, když už čtete o těch různých románech o koncentrácích, možná by stálo za to přijít, kde se vzaly a že byly třeba i v Jugošce nebo v Africe.
August 9, 2020
Excellent, almost encyclopedic account of the horrifyingly banal use of concentration camps over the last century. The writing is unsparing, the content deeply disturbing (in a wonderful wake the f*ck up kind of way - the Holocaust was unspeakably awful but far from singular in its use of camps as a tool of torture; the legacy of government “emergencies” to “justify” the use of camps lives on around the globe today. Looking at you, xinjiang, gitmo, Burma...)
June 5, 2021
More a 4.5 to 4.75. The word economy is beyond impressive and the span and depth of detail amazing. This is its own textbook, really and I've no doubt I'll return to it as one. It's ghastly and ongoing.
December 17, 2017
Very depressing, as one could expect. However, if one is interested in the subject, it is great. A lot of things i had no idea about.
May 17, 2018
A detailed, lengthy, and yet eminently accessible story of the 100+ year experiment in concentration camps and detention facilities outside of formal judicial structures. Pitzer shows how the camps set up by the Spanish in Cuba inspired the Germans in their colonial possessions in West Africa, and how gruesome approaches to interrogations and torture were borrowed among erstwhile enemies in the fascist and communist blocs. The chapter-by-chapter approach hopscotches from country to country and from decade to decade, with understandable emphasis placed on the Nazi and Soviet approaches to concentration, detention, re-education, and ultimately death camps. As Pitzer depicts it, the worst atrocities exist on the same continuum of governmental and juridical practices that have been undertaken by revolutionary states (North Korea, Vietnam, China), colonial powers (imperial Germany and Gaullist France), neo-fascist juntas (Chile, Argentina), and of course democracies - just as Cuba begins the book, Guantanamo Bay and the War on Terror closes it.
The chapters are snappy and the analysis compelling, but the personal narratives of the victims of concentration camps are most likely to stick with the reader, including the horrific stories of Margaret Buber-Neuman, a German communist imprisoned by the Soviets because she was a German, and later captured by the Nazis and tortured because she was a Jew. The personal narratives of the victims of the laogai system in the People’s Republic of China, the internees of World War I, and the desaperacidos of Argentina’s dirty war are all examined in the broader context of a century-long ugly reality: just as Antonin Scalia said about the detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II, “you are kidding yourself” if you thought that internment camps and mass detentions wouldn’t happen again. When Solzhenitsyn wrote of the gulag archipelago, he couldn’t have envisioned that variants of concentration camps and indefinite extrajudicial detention would come to exist in almost every political context, on a worldwide basis. As Pitzer closes, “the face of the planet is riddled with camps and the ruins of camps... it is impossible to take it all in. There is always a location out of view, on the far side of the globe, where the innocent and the guilty and those in between have been trapped for a time, for now, or forever.”
The chapters are snappy and the analysis compelling, but the personal narratives of the victims of concentration camps are most likely to stick with the reader, including the horrific stories of Margaret Buber-Neuman, a German communist imprisoned by the Soviets because she was a German, and later captured by the Nazis and tortured because she was a Jew. The personal narratives of the victims of the laogai system in the People’s Republic of China, the internees of World War I, and the desaperacidos of Argentina’s dirty war are all examined in the broader context of a century-long ugly reality: just as Antonin Scalia said about the detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II, “you are kidding yourself” if you thought that internment camps and mass detentions wouldn’t happen again. When Solzhenitsyn wrote of the gulag archipelago, he couldn’t have envisioned that variants of concentration camps and indefinite extrajudicial detention would come to exist in almost every political context, on a worldwide basis. As Pitzer closes, “the face of the planet is riddled with camps and the ruins of camps... it is impossible to take it all in. There is always a location out of view, on the far side of the globe, where the innocent and the guilty and those in between have been trapped for a time, for now, or forever.”
September 10, 2019
A moving and disturbing book. The events chronicled in this narrative are probably familiar to anyone who follows history or the news, but Pitzer manages to connect the history of concentration camps into one coherent thread, using personal testimonies from camp survivors and historical accounts and new interviews, all bringing the focus down to the human impact, while at the same time showing the reasons that governments and regimes shared for detaining people who have been convicted of no crime. She draws a line that runs from the Spanish-American War, running through countless monstrosities of the 20th century, leaving at the feet of the US authorities in Guantanamo Bay. I'd conjecture a new edition of the book might consider the concentration camps we utilized to keep the "other" from our southern border today.
"Policy planners will always return to mass detention, because it seems as if it should work, and it feels as if it could be done humanely," she writes. "The damage done by concentration camps has never stopped the reflexive enthusiasm for their use."
And it never ends well, as the American love affair with torture indicates.
"If these mechanisms of detention are left in place worldwide, an attorney will always appear with a legal rationale for the impulse to detain and torture at will," she writes. "Where abuse is set as policy, someone to play 'the Butcher' can always be found. ... Honorable people can do terrible things."
The problem is, despite a regime's confidence that it will get away with these atrocities, history at least will out: "This stuff will eventually come out," says Mark Fallon. "It's just a matter of when....We have detainees in indefinite detention. It's not about what they did to us. It's about what we did to them. If we're supposed to live up to our values as Americans, at some point, we have to say, we f*cked up. With the internment of Japanese Americans, we f*cked up. Native Americans, women couldn't vote, slavery ... we f*cked up. The only way you get by these shameful things as a country is to own up to them."
Instead of ridiculous battles over what a "concentration camp" is, we should well pay attention to the historical record. Because history will not be kind with us.
"Policy planners will always return to mass detention, because it seems as if it should work, and it feels as if it could be done humanely," she writes. "The damage done by concentration camps has never stopped the reflexive enthusiasm for their use."
And it never ends well, as the American love affair with torture indicates.
"If these mechanisms of detention are left in place worldwide, an attorney will always appear with a legal rationale for the impulse to detain and torture at will," she writes. "Where abuse is set as policy, someone to play 'the Butcher' can always be found. ... Honorable people can do terrible things."
The problem is, despite a regime's confidence that it will get away with these atrocities, history at least will out: "This stuff will eventually come out," says Mark Fallon. "It's just a matter of when....We have detainees in indefinite detention. It's not about what they did to us. It's about what we did to them. If we're supposed to live up to our values as Americans, at some point, we have to say, we f*cked up. With the internment of Japanese Americans, we f*cked up. Native Americans, women couldn't vote, slavery ... we f*cked up. The only way you get by these shameful things as a country is to own up to them."
Instead of ridiculous battles over what a "concentration camp" is, we should well pay attention to the historical record. Because history will not be kind with us.
December 29, 2017
One Long Night takes on a very heavy topic and is well-researched. However, it seems very uneven. With some chapters focused on one country, others one specific system, and others on entire regions.
Chapter 1: The book first starts with the Spanish-American War and looks at the internment camps in Cuba and the Philippines. This section I feel was mostly directed at the bloodthirstiness of the generals who led the war.
Chapter 2: Next was South Africa, divided into the British camps from the Boer War and German camps after the war.
Chapter 3: The third chapter looks at civilians who were interred during WWI all over Europe. It briefly mentions the Armenian genocide, which seems to be quite a pitfall considering the subject.
Chapter 4: Our next section, which has more weight is the Russian Gulags. We get a few personal stories, including one woman who was to be sent to a Gulag twice and later exchanged and sent to a German concentration camp.
Chapter 5: Auschwitz. This is the largest part of the book and where it seems the author knew the most. There are a few personal stories, but it's this section that receives the most focus.
Chapter 6: Is a continuation from WWII. There is a closer look at the round ups in France and internment camps by the Japanese and Americans, but more could have been filled out here.
Chapter 7: This is where entire continents start to be lumped together. China, Japan, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Considering everything that happened in the 1940s-1980s, lumping them together seemed to be a diservice.
Chapter 8: Africa, specifically Kenya and Algeria with the Mau Mau uprising and Algerian War.
Chapter 9: Chile and Pinochet.
Chapter 10: Ends with Guantanamo Bay which I find rather interesting because of its current status in the world and how it contradicts with all the other chapters. This book was meant to show internment camps that held civilian populations by the masses, but Guantanamo, with however you may view it, does not seem to fit with the rest of the book.
Chapter 1: The book first starts with the Spanish-American War and looks at the internment camps in Cuba and the Philippines. This section I feel was mostly directed at the bloodthirstiness of the generals who led the war.
Chapter 2: Next was South Africa, divided into the British camps from the Boer War and German camps after the war.
Chapter 3: The third chapter looks at civilians who were interred during WWI all over Europe. It briefly mentions the Armenian genocide, which seems to be quite a pitfall considering the subject.
Chapter 4: Our next section, which has more weight is the Russian Gulags. We get a few personal stories, including one woman who was to be sent to a Gulag twice and later exchanged and sent to a German concentration camp.
Chapter 5: Auschwitz. This is the largest part of the book and where it seems the author knew the most. There are a few personal stories, but it's this section that receives the most focus.
Chapter 6: Is a continuation from WWII. There is a closer look at the round ups in France and internment camps by the Japanese and Americans, but more could have been filled out here.
Chapter 7: This is where entire continents start to be lumped together. China, Japan, North Korea, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Considering everything that happened in the 1940s-1980s, lumping them together seemed to be a diservice.
Chapter 8: Africa, specifically Kenya and Algeria with the Mau Mau uprising and Algerian War.
Chapter 9: Chile and Pinochet.
Chapter 10: Ends with Guantanamo Bay which I find rather interesting because of its current status in the world and how it contradicts with all the other chapters. This book was meant to show internment camps that held civilian populations by the masses, but Guantanamo, with however you may view it, does not seem to fit with the rest of the book.
November 1, 2017
While I really enjoyed the work, I was less than fully sold on Pitzer's argument. Clearly she views the concept of concentration camp as a fairly modern (dare I even say progressive) development that society should continue to attempt to stamp out. She grants that the infamous Andersonville prison camp serves as precursor of what was to come. And I think her bracketing the century with Cuba at the beginning and Guantanamo at the end is somewhat artful. The question I end up with is parallel to Pitzer's argument, but one she never quite addresses. Most, but not all, of the camps that Pitzer describes spring from some type of conflict that is usually military. The military is normally charged to prosecute national aims through war that invariably leads to destruction which includes the opposition military, but also disrupts civil government and society. The killing of the opposition military force seems a normal consequence of war, the same of the modern civilian population not so much. From biblical battles, through the Crusades, and even entering the modern age, the annihilation of the opposition, including civilians, is often described as a consequence of war - concentrating civilians in controlled environments probably appeared to be a humane outcome to the enlightened mind. One now wonders. Perhaps the outcome of any conflict that includes the taking of human life needs to consider that such life will include 'innocent' (ie, non-military) life in the equation. Perhaps Pitzer's thesis is too limited and should have considered the alternative(s?) to concentration camps in the world of the modern nation-state.
October 31, 2017
The history of concentration camps starts in Cuba and ends in Ciuba . A concise history of all the camps that used from all over the world .i am glad it was any longer though. Germany Asia the Gulags in Russia the camps of ours for Japanese and more
February 27, 2020
Right. So. Humans... you know we suck, right? In what would be a genius move in chess, risk or stratego, the concentration camp was born. It seriously was a genius move. Not a good move, not a humane move, not even a particularly well thought out move, but it decisively fixed the military problem at hand. You see in the 1880s in Cuba the natives wanted independence and the Spanish were not keen on this idea. The Spanish had better weapons and more soldiers but the Cubans knew the lay of the land and were not afraid to fight dirty. The Spanish couldn’t deal with guerrilla warfare, their battle plans wouldn’t work and they couldn’t keep control.
So, how do you fight against an enemy who can be a soldier one day and a farmer the next? How do you stop the villagers who empathize with them from providing provisions (or possibly being robbed if they don’t)? Simple. Cut off the supply chain. Who is supplying the guerrillas? Civilians in villages. Remove them and then there is no one to supply the guerrillas. On paper it is a stroke of brilliance, just move all the civilian villagers back behind protected Spanish lines. Don’t forget to destroy their crops and slaughter their livestock before burning their homes to the ground too, just so the rebels can’t possibly get any resources. What could possibly go wrong?
The story of concentration camps is not just a story of Nazis and genocide. It is far more far reaching and filled with moments of irony, good intentions and painful hubris. The need to control and contain is a profoundly human thing, as is sadly the us-vs-them mentality that sees ethnic populations corralled and segregated in their own countries (the Uyghur in China and the Rohingya in Myanmar are but two modern examples) in the modern incarnation of the concentration camp.
First world countries are not immune. Refugees at the border into America were herded into makeshift camps, separated from their children , who would be apparently put into foster care “or whatever” according to White House chief of staff John Kelly. Families separated, people moved without proper paperwork, horrible conditions and this was in 2018. Australia treats its refugees in detention centers outside of Australia, in a third world country. The government has gone to extreme lengths not to let refugees set foot on Australian soil, even down to passing laws denying medical care. Not content for them not to find refuge in Australia the government also seems to make it needlessly difficult for other countries to allow them to be granted asylum either. The situation is so bad that refugees in Australian detention are committing suicide in alarming numbers. These are people who have fled their homes with what little they could carry, fled persecution, fled the Taliban and ISIS, ending their lives because they can not face another day of ‘humane’ treatment by the Australian government.
Language is a powerful thing and we ( as humans) have got better at using it to justify, explain, deny and generally skirt around rules and regulations designed to keep us in check. Prisoners of war and criminals have legal rights but if they are renamed “detainees” ... those same rights don’t apply. And that leads me to what I think I am going to take away from this book....
Possibly the saddest thing about this book is the fact that for all the civilization tries to protect our human rights, for all the Geneva Conventions, Nuremberg Laws, rules of war, international humanitarian agreements, declarations of human rights, constitutions, even the American Declaration of Independence, it can all be ripped away in seconds. A military coup, elected leader slowly downgrading a country’s democracy so people don’t notice their rights vanishing or a bloody revolution, it doesn’t matter how. Sooner of later there will be unwanted people, dissidents, political undesirables or people of the wrong race or faith, and the ruling system will need somewhere to put them. And the concentration camp rises again.
TL;DR: People suck, concentration camps are bad but this book is really, really good.
So, how do you fight against an enemy who can be a soldier one day and a farmer the next? How do you stop the villagers who empathize with them from providing provisions (or possibly being robbed if they don’t)? Simple. Cut off the supply chain. Who is supplying the guerrillas? Civilians in villages. Remove them and then there is no one to supply the guerrillas. On paper it is a stroke of brilliance, just move all the civilian villagers back behind protected Spanish lines. Don’t forget to destroy their crops and slaughter their livestock before burning their homes to the ground too, just so the rebels can’t possibly get any resources. What could possibly go wrong?
The story of concentration camps is not just a story of Nazis and genocide. It is far more far reaching and filled with moments of irony, good intentions and painful hubris. The need to control and contain is a profoundly human thing, as is sadly the us-vs-them mentality that sees ethnic populations corralled and segregated in their own countries (the Uyghur in China and the Rohingya in Myanmar are but two modern examples) in the modern incarnation of the concentration camp.
First world countries are not immune. Refugees at the border into America were herded into makeshift camps, separated from their children , who would be apparently put into foster care “or whatever” according to White House chief of staff John Kelly. Families separated, people moved without proper paperwork, horrible conditions and this was in 2018. Australia treats its refugees in detention centers outside of Australia, in a third world country. The government has gone to extreme lengths not to let refugees set foot on Australian soil, even down to passing laws denying medical care. Not content for them not to find refuge in Australia the government also seems to make it needlessly difficult for other countries to allow them to be granted asylum either. The situation is so bad that refugees in Australian detention are committing suicide in alarming numbers. These are people who have fled their homes with what little they could carry, fled persecution, fled the Taliban and ISIS, ending their lives because they can not face another day of ‘humane’ treatment by the Australian government.
Language is a powerful thing and we ( as humans) have got better at using it to justify, explain, deny and generally skirt around rules and regulations designed to keep us in check. Prisoners of war and criminals have legal rights but if they are renamed “detainees” ... those same rights don’t apply. And that leads me to what I think I am going to take away from this book....
Possibly the saddest thing about this book is the fact that for all the civilization tries to protect our human rights, for all the Geneva Conventions, Nuremberg Laws, rules of war, international humanitarian agreements, declarations of human rights, constitutions, even the American Declaration of Independence, it can all be ripped away in seconds. A military coup, elected leader slowly downgrading a country’s democracy so people don’t notice their rights vanishing or a bloody revolution, it doesn’t matter how. Sooner of later there will be unwanted people, dissidents, political undesirables or people of the wrong race or faith, and the ruling system will need somewhere to put them. And the concentration camp rises again.
TL;DR: People suck, concentration camps are bad but this book is really, really good.
January 14, 2019
(Audiobook) This book attempts to define the history of the concentration camp, mixing together academic facts any eyewitness accounts. While most people, when they hear the word “concentration camp” will immediately think of Germany and World War II, Pitzer lets the reader know that there is much more to the concept. For her, the concentration camp started in Cuba in the late 1890s, when Spanish military commanders, attempting to subdue Cuban revolutionaries, created locations for the housing of such individuals, to isolate them and defeat their purposes. From there, Pitzer traces the evolution of the camps, covering almost every major conflict between 1898 and 2017, as well as major internal uprisings across the globe.
The idea and purpose of the concentration camp evolved over time, but some of the constants remained. Governments used such mechanisms to hold and isolate elements of a society, be it internal or external adversaries or potential threats. The treatment of the individuals interred varied based on the people running the camps and the agendas of those who ordered the overall implementation of those camps. In some cases, the treatment could be benign, but more often than not, the treatment of those in the camps devolved into some form of torture or anguish.
The bulk of the book is spent covering the camps during the Soviet and Nazi regimes. It is not an all-encompassing analysis, but offers enough insight to help make Pitzer’s point about the role of the camps and how they evolved. Perhaps it is just as well that she focuses on Cuba as the origin of the concentration camp, as she spends the last part of the book defining the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay as a Concentration Camp. This is going to be the most controversial portion of the book. While she does not call the camp like those of the Gulags or the major Nazi camps, the treatment of detainees and the actions of the American government, in her assessment, make GITMO the modern concentration camp.
The book offers insight into areas most Americans would have little knowledge of, and the accounts are engaging in this material. Yet, this is but a surface level book, and much of the details and questions she wants to answer can’t really be answered in a book this small (relatively). Not sure I can call GITMO a concentration camp, but perhaps that is a case of agreeing to disagree. Bonus points for the author reading her own work, thus giving this version a 3.5 over a 3. If nothing else, a book that offers a chance to start the debate.
The idea and purpose of the concentration camp evolved over time, but some of the constants remained. Governments used such mechanisms to hold and isolate elements of a society, be it internal or external adversaries or potential threats. The treatment of the individuals interred varied based on the people running the camps and the agendas of those who ordered the overall implementation of those camps. In some cases, the treatment could be benign, but more often than not, the treatment of those in the camps devolved into some form of torture or anguish.
The bulk of the book is spent covering the camps during the Soviet and Nazi regimes. It is not an all-encompassing analysis, but offers enough insight to help make Pitzer’s point about the role of the camps and how they evolved. Perhaps it is just as well that she focuses on Cuba as the origin of the concentration camp, as she spends the last part of the book defining the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay as a Concentration Camp. This is going to be the most controversial portion of the book. While she does not call the camp like those of the Gulags or the major Nazi camps, the treatment of detainees and the actions of the American government, in her assessment, make GITMO the modern concentration camp.
The book offers insight into areas most Americans would have little knowledge of, and the accounts are engaging in this material. Yet, this is but a surface level book, and much of the details and questions she wants to answer can’t really be answered in a book this small (relatively). Not sure I can call GITMO a concentration camp, but perhaps that is a case of agreeing to disagree. Bonus points for the author reading her own work, thus giving this version a 3.5 over a 3. If nothing else, a book that offers a chance to start the debate.
October 17, 2017
Are concentration camps a necessary evil or are they simply places where acts of evil must always occur? I once thought I knew the answer; however, after reading One Long Night, author Andrea Pitzer’s global history of concentration camps, I’m not so sure.
If anyone had asked me to guess at the earliest examples of concentration camps, I might have mentioned the reservations used to remove Native Americans from valuable lands that we coveted. Or, I might have mentioned American plantations where African slaves were employed in forced labor. However, Pitzer makes an excellent argument that the modern system of concentration camps began in Cuba during the revolution there during the late 19th Century. Inspired by Sherman’s March to the Sea, the Spanish engaged in Total War, incarcerating and tormenting noncombatants, to separate the rebels from their popular support base thus depriving them of food and war materials. She then shines a bright light into the darkest corners of history and tells a tale that comes full circle, ending like a thrill ride where it began, at Guantanamo Bay.
Dare you read it? If Pitzer limited her descriptions to the cold academic facts, you would have nothing to fear. However, she breathes life into the story by populating it with real people who were incarcerated in concentration camps. The effect is as though you’re touring a Nazi camp at Auschwitz or Birkenau and you recognize a family member or friend among the piles of bodies. Not even Old Blood ‘n Guts himself, General George S. Patton, could bring himself to enter the carnal houses full of strangers. Could you knowing the humanity of these victims?
Maybe you should force yourself to read it, as I did. It is unlikely that concentration camps will simply go away. They have been an important strategic element ever since the warlords came to realize that, as Napoleon infamously said, “Armies march on their stomachs.” All wars, even wars of aggression mounted by terrorists, depend on the support of a civilian population feeding, arming and, in some case, hiding the warriors.
We must solve the riddle of how to deprive enemy combatants of this support or suffer the consequences. Sadly, as Pitzer describes in her book, civilians have been incarcerated in time of war without evidence that they are supporting an enemy, but rather to rob them of their personal and real property, or out of unfounded fears, or simply in response to racial, cultural, or religious bias. Thus, we can no longer simply leave these decisions to elected or military leaders who have proven, if Pitzer’s testimony is to be believed, incapable of deciding these issues wisely.
Ultimately, we need to memorialize a solution in law or, when the devils we seek to defeat turn, there will be no one and nothing to defend us. Our defenders may become our persecutors as has happened in almost every concentration camp in recorded history. You must prepare yourself to join the conversation. That’s why I highly recommend One Long Night.
If anyone had asked me to guess at the earliest examples of concentration camps, I might have mentioned the reservations used to remove Native Americans from valuable lands that we coveted. Or, I might have mentioned American plantations where African slaves were employed in forced labor. However, Pitzer makes an excellent argument that the modern system of concentration camps began in Cuba during the revolution there during the late 19th Century. Inspired by Sherman’s March to the Sea, the Spanish engaged in Total War, incarcerating and tormenting noncombatants, to separate the rebels from their popular support base thus depriving them of food and war materials. She then shines a bright light into the darkest corners of history and tells a tale that comes full circle, ending like a thrill ride where it began, at Guantanamo Bay.
Dare you read it? If Pitzer limited her descriptions to the cold academic facts, you would have nothing to fear. However, she breathes life into the story by populating it with real people who were incarcerated in concentration camps. The effect is as though you’re touring a Nazi camp at Auschwitz or Birkenau and you recognize a family member or friend among the piles of bodies. Not even Old Blood ‘n Guts himself, General George S. Patton, could bring himself to enter the carnal houses full of strangers. Could you knowing the humanity of these victims?
Maybe you should force yourself to read it, as I did. It is unlikely that concentration camps will simply go away. They have been an important strategic element ever since the warlords came to realize that, as Napoleon infamously said, “Armies march on their stomachs.” All wars, even wars of aggression mounted by terrorists, depend on the support of a civilian population feeding, arming and, in some case, hiding the warriors.
We must solve the riddle of how to deprive enemy combatants of this support or suffer the consequences. Sadly, as Pitzer describes in her book, civilians have been incarcerated in time of war without evidence that they are supporting an enemy, but rather to rob them of their personal and real property, or out of unfounded fears, or simply in response to racial, cultural, or religious bias. Thus, we can no longer simply leave these decisions to elected or military leaders who have proven, if Pitzer’s testimony is to be believed, incapable of deciding these issues wisely.
Ultimately, we need to memorialize a solution in law or, when the devils we seek to defeat turn, there will be no one and nothing to defend us. Our defenders may become our persecutors as has happened in almost every concentration camp in recorded history. You must prepare yourself to join the conversation. That’s why I highly recommend One Long Night.
August 19, 2019
Andrea Pitzer provides a necessary history of the world’s concentration camps. These recent inventions (she argues beginning during in Cuba prior to the Spanish-American War) are camps where civilians are separated from the rest of society without due process and where those held lack most freedoms. It is important to read about acts of dehumanization in both our past and present in order to right errors now and hopefully prevent/limit future atrocities. This book is paced well and its mostly chronological order helps in keeping things straight. Guantanamo Bay’s current camp is the book’s nexus, serving as both the introduction and final chapter.
I was unaware that the term “concentration camp” pre-dated the Holocaust. It was fascinating (and angering and depressing) to learn about the various camps employed during the two World Wars and other more regional conflicts. The chapter on Chile and Argentina provided mostly new (to me) information. I’d known about concerns related to communism, but not about a camp in a large soccer stadium (Santiago). Chapters on Cuba, Kenya and Myanmar are also impactful.
Pitzer quotes journalists who during various wars risked their lives and/or societal standing to visit camps and report on their abuses. Emily Hobhouse’s work during the Boer War was especially notable. A great reminder to get involved.
Pitzer certainly made choices as to what to include. Some have argued for greater inclusion of war camps or refugee camps. She certainly alludes to both and also notes that various camps encompass a variety of definitions. Ultimately, I applaud her choices.
I was unaware that the term “concentration camp” pre-dated the Holocaust. It was fascinating (and angering and depressing) to learn about the various camps employed during the two World Wars and other more regional conflicts. The chapter on Chile and Argentina provided mostly new (to me) information. I’d known about concerns related to communism, but not about a camp in a large soccer stadium (Santiago). Chapters on Cuba, Kenya and Myanmar are also impactful.
Pitzer quotes journalists who during various wars risked their lives and/or societal standing to visit camps and report on their abuses. Emily Hobhouse’s work during the Boer War was especially notable. A great reminder to get involved.
Pitzer certainly made choices as to what to include. Some have argued for greater inclusion of war camps or refugee camps. She certainly alludes to both and also notes that various camps encompass a variety of definitions. Ultimately, I applaud her choices.
November 17, 2019
I was lured into reading this when the author was a guest expert on a podcast I listen to. I checked out the book and then renewed it twice before I even TRIED to read it, because who wants to read a 400 plus page book that’s so serious?!? ME!!! When I finally sat down and opened it, I was blown away. The first 100 pages are the most interesting, because it starts right around 1900 in Cuba, so it’s not ancient history at all. In the next 10 years, 4 empires made concentration camps with disastrous results for women and children.
Overall, I knew a lot about the Holocaust before this, and I must have thought the Germans invented the whole camp system, when really there is a fascinating history of the mass containment of civilian populations. By World War 1, it was almost farcical how many countries were “containing” what they deemed “enemy combatants”.
I skimmed some of the WWII parts, and then dipped in an out of interesting areas in Asia as the camps became a way of ruling parties controlling their own citizens. The book began and ended with Guantanamo, which reminded me of Malcom’s Gladwell’s “Talking to Strangers”, which says torture will never get you answers you can trust. Also, in the case of Guantanamo, those detained were mostly innocent anyway.
“Policy planners will always return to mass detention, because it seems as if it should work, and it feels as if it could be done humanely. The damage done by concentration camps has never stopped the reflexive enthusiasm for their use,”. (p407)
Overall, I knew a lot about the Holocaust before this, and I must have thought the Germans invented the whole camp system, when really there is a fascinating history of the mass containment of civilian populations. By World War 1, it was almost farcical how many countries were “containing” what they deemed “enemy combatants”.
I skimmed some of the WWII parts, and then dipped in an out of interesting areas in Asia as the camps became a way of ruling parties controlling their own citizens. The book began and ended with Guantanamo, which reminded me of Malcom’s Gladwell’s “Talking to Strangers”, which says torture will never get you answers you can trust. Also, in the case of Guantanamo, those detained were mostly innocent anyway.
“Policy planners will always return to mass detention, because it seems as if it should work, and it feels as if it could be done humanely. The damage done by concentration camps has never stopped the reflexive enthusiasm for their use,”. (p407)
July 5, 2025
Took some time to stew over my thoughts before writing a review.
Overall, this was a very informative book. Because this is a global history of the topic, each chapter is relatively broad in its focus. I imagine there are multiple books out there covering the camps discussed in every single chapter here.
While I understand the author's need to sort of skate over more detailed descriptions of certain events in order to keep this book to a readable length, there were a few instances where I thought Pitzer should have given more attention to things that she generally just breezed past. The first time I was left wanting more was in the chapter on the Boer War. Pitzer talks about the Boer camps and how they were segregated. She's specifically following one woman for most of the chapter, a British woman who decided to travel to South Africa after the outbreak of the war and who spent many years traveling between the Boer camps (I can't remember her name and I've already returned the book to the library). Pitzer says that this woman didn't give much attention to the camps Black South Africans were put in other than to stress their horrid conditions even compared to the Boer camps, and Pitzer seems to follow her lead. We hear comparatively little about the Black camps, and it just felt like a strange choice to me.
The second instance that really stood out to me was during the discussion of the Japanese internment camps in America during WWII. Pitzer dedicates a couple dozen pages to the Nazi concentration camps and the French camps, but has maybe 4 pages total about the Japanese internment. I don't think she was wrong to spend so much time on the European camps, but I think more needed to be said about the internment of Japanese and Japanese American people during the war. Japanese internment even comes up again in the final chapter on Guantanamo, so it left me really confused that we got almost nothing on these internment camps in the chapters about WWII.
Overall, this was a very informative book. Because this is a global history of the topic, each chapter is relatively broad in its focus. I imagine there are multiple books out there covering the camps discussed in every single chapter here.
While I understand the author's need to sort of skate over more detailed descriptions of certain events in order to keep this book to a readable length, there were a few instances where I thought Pitzer should have given more attention to things that she generally just breezed past. The first time I was left wanting more was in the chapter on the Boer War. Pitzer talks about the Boer camps and how they were segregated. She's specifically following one woman for most of the chapter, a British woman who decided to travel to South Africa after the outbreak of the war and who spent many years traveling between the Boer camps (I can't remember her name and I've already returned the book to the library). Pitzer says that this woman didn't give much attention to the camps Black South Africans were put in other than to stress their horrid conditions even compared to the Boer camps, and Pitzer seems to follow her lead. We hear comparatively little about the Black camps, and it just felt like a strange choice to me.
The second instance that really stood out to me was during the discussion of the Japanese internment camps in America during WWII. Pitzer dedicates a couple dozen pages to the Nazi concentration camps and the French camps, but has maybe 4 pages total about the Japanese internment. I don't think she was wrong to spend so much time on the European camps, but I think more needed to be said about the internment of Japanese and Japanese American people during the war. Japanese internment even comes up again in the final chapter on Guantanamo, so it left me really confused that we got almost nothing on these internment camps in the chapters about WWII.
February 17, 2018
Fairly impressive history of large camps from the late 1800's to present day that describes the why, the how, the what and the who of each camp and how these influenced others. Starting with Spanish attempts to win the hearts and minds of Cuba and the Philippines and ending with Myanmar and Gitmo, the camps have long been the stain on all modern nations. This was a hard read as it rubs the emotions raw with the abuse of millions worldwide-Africans abused by the English and the Germans; Germans abusing millions in Europe; French abusing Europeans, Algerians and French and more. China, Cambodia, Russia, Japan, Chili, Argentina and more are all covered here.
One learns from experience. Trotsky was held by the English in a camp in Canada. When he got to Russia, he decided that the camp system must have been a good idea. Here in America, we had camps for Germans and Italians during WWI. We expanded this to include Japanese during WWII. The very big difference as pointed out in this book is that as bad as it was, the US did not torture, or execute the residences of the camps. No justification of this complete disregard of our Constitution by the Wilson and the Roosevelt Administrations, but there is a very major difference compared to most others. As for Gitmo, the book made attempts to discuss, to describe and explain how it differs.
Well researched for a subject that represents the dark side of humanity.
One learns from experience. Trotsky was held by the English in a camp in Canada. When he got to Russia, he decided that the camp system must have been a good idea. Here in America, we had camps for Germans and Italians during WWI. We expanded this to include Japanese during WWII. The very big difference as pointed out in this book is that as bad as it was, the US did not torture, or execute the residences of the camps. No justification of this complete disregard of our Constitution by the Wilson and the Roosevelt Administrations, but there is a very major difference compared to most others. As for Gitmo, the book made attempts to discuss, to describe and explain how it differs.
Well researched for a subject that represents the dark side of humanity.
October 24, 2020
Getting through this book can be difficult at times. Not because of the way it's written, it's a beautiful piece of writing. The difficulty comes through in learning about the failures of humanity that we call concentration camps. The use of broad facts and governmental policies combined with the personal stories of prisoners who lived through these atrocities and were affected by these facts and policies make this an especially powerful book. Even the stories of the prisoners who had it good enough to survive are harrowing, I can only imagine what those who never got to tell their stories experienced.
I learned a lot from this book. I think when people hear about concentration camps, they think about the Nazis or Soviet Russia, probably the two most famous examples. They each get their own haunting chapter, but there is so much more. Concentration/internment/detention camps have been used all over the world in a myriad of cruel ways, mainly to extrajudicially exert power over a group of people. They're used as tools of colonialism, silencing government dissent, and of course, basic racism and hatred.
The extent to which they have been used not only by totalitarian governments, but also by powers that talk a big game about freedom, is pretty shocking. This is a great book for learning about such powerful and important history.
I learned a lot from this book. I think when people hear about concentration camps, they think about the Nazis or Soviet Russia, probably the two most famous examples. They each get their own haunting chapter, but there is so much more. Concentration/internment/detention camps have been used all over the world in a myriad of cruel ways, mainly to extrajudicially exert power over a group of people. They're used as tools of colonialism, silencing government dissent, and of course, basic racism and hatred.
The extent to which they have been used not only by totalitarian governments, but also by powers that talk a big game about freedom, is pretty shocking. This is a great book for learning about such powerful and important history.
June 24, 2019
Pitzer chronicles the emergence of the concentration camp through wars of the last 120 years, detailing their first appearance in Cuba and their slowly evolving purpose and general acceptance as a means of warfare. She writes on wars I had never heard of, and how camps were used by the Spanish, Americans, British and Germans even before the First World War. In the 20th century, concentration camps have been in use on every continent, killing and hurting millions of mostly innocent and vulnerable people.
Following individuals that have left testimony, she shows how camps cannot be expected to avoid turning into places of death, violence, torture, cruelty, injustice, indifference and despair. The stories of survivors of torture or forced labor are absolutely enraging. The amount of detail and background information on systemic abuse and denial by purpetrators is enormous.
Piltzer's staggering book leaves little to hope for but a lot to fight for, ending with the observation that the face of the earth is littered with camps and their ruins. And that we will likely never return to the pre-camp times where concentration camps were simply not considered an option.
A must-read for everyone.
Following individuals that have left testimony, she shows how camps cannot be expected to avoid turning into places of death, violence, torture, cruelty, injustice, indifference and despair. The stories of survivors of torture or forced labor are absolutely enraging. The amount of detail and background information on systemic abuse and denial by purpetrators is enormous.
Piltzer's staggering book leaves little to hope for but a lot to fight for, ending with the observation that the face of the earth is littered with camps and their ruins. And that we will likely never return to the pre-camp times where concentration camps were simply not considered an option.
A must-read for everyone.
July 9, 2019
While this book provides a good survey of concentration camps since their inception in Cuba in the late nineteenth century it suffers from two faults. Firstly, framing each episode through the personal stories of prisoners ends up distracting from the systemetized nature of different countries' camps, why they existed, how they functioned and were thought of, in favor of the experience of prisoners inside who were, almost definitionally by the fact that they survived and produced extensive written records after their release, nonrepresentative. Secondly, by aiming the project to land at Guantanamo Bay Pitzer pushes far harder on seeing the similarities rather than differences between different kinds of camps as they evolved over the course of the twentieth century, thus leaving us with less explanation than I'd like about why and how those changes came about when they did (such as why camps in Pinochet's Chile were far more mentally sequestered from the rest of society than those in Communist states, or why camps for the Rohingya were so much more permeable than ones used in other ethnic cleansing campaigns). On the whole this is still a good overview of the topic but misses several opportunities to be the defining text on the topic
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