Chicago Public Radio on *Polish* concentration camps

Yes, I have read the Wikipedia article...apparently this detention camp was in operation for a period of about 4 years...there is no mention of any atrocities or mass-murders there...and this was not the first concentration camp in Europe, the first were the Bolshevik Gulag camps, which were in existence since the 20's, although many of these camps were in the Asian part of he Soviet Union...your point here?

Read it again - it specifically mentions atrocities, torture and deaths. I spotted that bit first time..... And it was certainly the first concentration camp in Europe.

But since it's in Belarus, those who believe Auschwitz to be a 'Polish concentration camp' should call it a Belarussian concentration camp, and those who conside Auschwitz to be a 'German concentration camp should call Bereza-Kartuszka a Polish concentration camp. Unfortunate, but that's the way it is.

Having read the wikipedia stuff and other sources, I have but one question. Why did the Poles behave like that, tp their own people and others? Why?

I have read it, and I would say it is stretching reality to call this a 'concentration camp'...
it was more likely just a jail...the article mentiones a prisoner capacity of 4-500...this is
hardly a 'concentration camp'...the article did mention that it was in a desolate location...
let me tell you, many American prisons are in VERY desolate locations...as to the behavior of Poles, they are just like anyone else: some are fools, some are power-hungry and some sadistic...but from what I read, this camp doesn't seem to fall under these evils...and, by the way, Wikipedia is heavily slanted and monitored for certain political content.

The very first concentration camp was actually Spanish though it wasn't on European soil - it was set up in Cuba between 1895 and 1898. The idea was taken up by the British in South Africa during the Boer war.

The first camp on European soil was set up in Germany on the 28th February 1933 (see diz-emslandlager.de/english/campsoo.htm), one day after the burning of the Reichstag.

Bereza Kartuska went into operation on the night between 6th and 7th July 1934.

Agreed. Though in the case of pages relating to Poland, there is always very heavy and often acrimonious discussion and in some cases calls for the pages to reflect the Polish point of view and no other even to the extent of translating the Polish-language version!

There's something called the 'Polish Wikipedia Committee' comprising historians and other academics of strongly differing opinions, and they exist to maintain some sort of order (some call it control) on pages concerning Poland.

As for Bereza-Kartuza, more deserves to be known about it - if only to exorcise the ghosts and bring comfort to those (surely elderly) whose relatives were tortured and died there.

HHHmm, what about the American concentration camps......sorry,do I mean the Indian reservations of the late 19th early 20th century or maybe the camps built to house all those deadly japannese americans like ensign Sulu and his mum?

Or maybe the fact that German and Austrian jews who managed to escape to britain before the war soon found themselves interned in camps around the UK and even deported like cattle to Oz and Canada as "dangerous aliens"..... Every country in the world must have utiised this form of enclosure of people at sometime,gets a bit boring that only the Germans and the "russians" have to bare the burden of guilt.

Good point, isthatu. However the Germans and the Russians did go at it with particular zeal.

The most famous American 'concentration camp' was Andersonville SC, used by the Confederacy AKA Scottish Rite Freemasonry, to intern Union soldiers during our Civil War...it was worse than German camps in WWII...also, the Japanese were placed in 'internment compounds' in California & some Western states during WWII...right now, there is some anecdotal evidence that FEMA/Dept. of Homeland Security have set up/are setting up various 'detention camps' in many states to house American 'terrorists' in the event of a

'national crisis'.

Rather,incompitence seemed to be the major killer in other nations camps,where as in germano russian camps efficiancy ruled the day.


History always written by the victors,the Union were no better when it came to P O W camps.


Lol, OK then,at least your not Calling Robert E Lee a secret Jew...........


Eh, anectdotal...What would you call Gitmo's various little prisons then,Holiday camps?
Mind you,by the time fema gets round to things Mad Max will probably be battling it out with the mutant zombies for controll of route 666 :)

One of the prime, movers and shakers of the Confederacy was Albert Pike, the 'Grand
Pontiff of Scottich Rite Freemasonry' and the founder of the Scottish Rite in America, in
Charleston SC, at a latitude of 33 degrees...pretty funny!...Pike was also a leader of the
'Knights of the Golden Circle' a very large quasi-Masonic para-military group, that formed the nucleus of the Army of the Confederacy...you are a student of American history, yet you didn't know that this is true?

Jews agreed that concentration camps (WWII) should be called German not only Nazist and definitely not Polish

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_death_camp

So let's get this straight: a camp in which people are detained without charge or trial and kept in cells of 70+ people is a jail if it was run by Poles; Potulice camp, despite being run until 1950, was strictly a non-Polish affair; Jaworzno was run until 1953 and despite the Polish government decree of 23 April 1947 designating it as the place to lock up the Lemko was also strictly non-Polish; and then there's Zgoda camp which, despite being under the control of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland and commanded by a Polish citizen who had been born and lived his entire life in Poland and who is currently wanted by the Polish state on charges of crimes against humanity, was also strictly non-Polish; as was the camp in £ambinowice where the Polish born-and-bred camp commander set fire to the camp buildings and order the prisoners (a mix of Silesians and former members of the Anders army) trying to put out the flames to be shot.

Funny how there have been so many concentration camps in Poland and that some of them were set up and/or staffed and/or run and/or commanded by Poles and/or the Polish government but not a single one of them was in the slightest bit Polish.

Funny,I thought the nucleus of the CSA was the states militias and half the west point graduates,but you give me food for thought.As to the title,"student of american history" ,Im flattered but just an interested amatuer.

Anyhoo, Unfortunatly Im pretty sure now the first Concentration camp was actually a Scottish thing,In edinburgh a couple of centuries ago, some sort of religious thingy was going on as usual and a lot of people died.....

You sir are correct. Thank god for the internet. Finally the voice of ordinary White people is being known, rather than the semitic crap we've always been fed.

I'm so sick of "Holocaustomania". Did you know that in England they teach that 7 million jews died in the "holocaust" and in the U.S. they teach 6 million? Who comes up with these numbers? Did someone find 1,000,000 death certificates for jews and didn't tell the U.S.?

Potulice was started off as a German concentration camp and was taken over by the Polish communist authorities after WWII, as were many others. The internees in these camps were generally Polish for it was common practice in that period (which lasted into the mid-50’s) to arrest, torture and even dispatch to the other world those Polish citizens who actively opposed Poland’s post-war political status brought about by Mr Stalin and Messrs Roosevelt and Churchill. (viz.Yalta, Potsdam etc)

If we're going to dot all the "i's" and cross all the "t's" perhaps we should do it thoroughly and lay the blame at the feet of all those who contributed to the dire situation in those years.

no "they" dont, it is taught that an approximate figure is 5.5 million but this can never be known as exact records do not exist. Stop spreading your deep south type bile and paranoia,you dont represent white people anymore than adolf hitler or mother teresa....

Do explain how Mr Churchill is accountable for the status brought about by the Potsdam conference, seeing that at the time of the conference he the leader of the opposition. And then explain how Mr Churchill is accountable for the status brought about by the Potsdam conference, seeing that at the time of the conference he was dead.


Alternatively we could just blame the people who ran concentration camps, i.e. in some cases Poles. Or we could blame the governments which saw the need for concentration camps, i.e. in some cases the Polish government. Or we could blame the governments which saw the need to set up and run concentration camps, i.e. in some cases the Polish government. Or we could blame the states which did not see the need to prosecute people who ran concentration camps, i.e. in some cases the Polish state.

Oh, yes! Excellent point! Yes, indeed – we must add Truman and Atlee to the list. Though things were largely decided at Yalta – at least as far as Poland’s future was concerned.


No quarrel here in the least - they should all be held responsible and brought to trial. I quite agree.

Churchill didn't think that Poland's fate was decided at Yalta. Have a read about Operation Unthinkable.

Operation Unthinkable wasn’t called unthinkable because it was plausible, it was called unthinkable because it was an improbable “just in case” strategy proposal in the event of the Soviet Union’s decision to spread it’s wings and push further west than permissible by the Yalta Agreement, even though affording Poland a “square deal” was mentioned.

Roosevelt and Churchill were not unaware of what they had unleashed by underestimating Stalin & Co., so one might even say that Operation Unthinkable was a conscience balm for Churchill – one that might go down nicely in history books and show him not only in an better light in some distant future, but also as someone who thought ahead.

Operation Unthinkable was based on very far-fetched hypotheses of everyone wanting to, and more importantly being able to, pick up the bits and pieces and go back to war against an ex-ally/new enemy who, by that time, could swamp the remnants of British, other European, and American forces just by looking at them. The USSR by that time out-numbered this supposed New Group of Allies (which would inevitably include the remnants of the German Army thereby creating even more problems of ill-feeling and goodness knows what else) both as far as machinery was concerned and as far as man-power was concerned.

Operation Unthinkable was also counting on highly unlikely popular consent, and this means that of UK and USA citizens (the ones in Eastern Europe were already fighting their new Master hence the aforementioned Concentration Camps in this thread), and the even more unlikely ability (and desire of the population to "go without" for a few more years) to face the incredible costs of such a proposition. (Bear in mind that the UK paid off its World War II debt to the USA in December of 2006 – just a year ago!)

The proof of the pudding, however, lies in the iron curtain (the result of Yalta) being lifted only in 1989 – so Operation Unthinkable remains what it was most likely meant to be: a Political Conscience Soother, a spot of back-covering, and a way of amending negative opinion in history books – once it was aired.

What about Guantanamo Bay, a good example for unlawful, ruthless, brutal and modern concentration camp.
We can discuss history until cows come home but please do not forget that we are making the history. Blaming Nazis and Stalin and allowing this monstrosity to be on our conscience is unforgivable. I believe HISTORY will judge us very harshly on that.

I think that these types of 'camps' go back into far antiquity...Man has been savage to his fellow man since way back...all these 'camps' are bad: jails, or some kind of residence

seperated from the greater population, are, unfortunately, neccesary, as sociopaths and
violent/congenital lawbreakers need to be seperated from the general population...it is
when these camps become an 'industry' that they are a menace to civilization.

Stop spreading your deep south type bile and paranoia

Isthatu, why are you always indulging in stereotypes about the American South and 'rednecks'?...their are many beautiful people in what you consider 'red-neck' America!...and yes, some do have red necks, but you live in the UK, correct?...you have your own version of the 'red neck' there, with their own sub-culture...these are called

'football' fans and supporters, no?

we call our rednecks chavs... many of them do support football teams

You misread the quotes from the document. Have a read of the full report.

You'll have to point me to where I misread, please. (I'm not being difficult - just battling with the icing on the Christmas cake.)

Well, I guess the confusion comes from the fact that the biggest concentration camps were located in either land that was formerly Polish or that is currently Polish.

But in reality, they're "nazi" concentration camps.

I remember one time I wrote a letter to the editors of the NY Times about mislabeling nazi concentration camps as being Polish.

Although, as we've discussed here already, both pre-war and post-war Poland had concentration camps of its very own.

The discussion here isn't about political prisons, detention centers, or concentration camps, but about the nazi death camps which were the primary weapon in the Holocaust.

Various forms of 'concentration camps' have been used widely throughout history. Hell, you could call the pre-war Jewish ghettos 'concentration camps', as they were areas where Jews would be forced to live. However, when we use the term 'concentration camps' today, we refer specifically to the death camps built by nazis.

As far as I know, there was no concentrated effort by the pre-war or post-war Polish governments to exterminate any racial or ethnic group, and if there was, you'd have to prove it.

So no, you cannot complain about "Polish" concentration camps.

The issue we're talking about here is about nazi extermination camps, not pre-war or post-war prisons and detention centers.

yes you can, Concentration camps and extermination camps were two seperate things,the nazis had both ,the poles both pre and post war only had the one type.


maybe,but football supporters dont generaly treat young black boys as adult criminals...Jena anyone.

Yes, Poland had only one type.

But since concentration camp is usually equated with death camp and since this thread is about NAZI extermination camps, you cannot call the "Polish" concentration camps.

We aren't talking about Polish detention centers (or 'concentration camps' if you will) but about the camps built by nazis during WWII.

Two completely different things.


Jena is way too overblown.

Those "boys" nearly beat to death a person.