I see massive difference between concentration camps guard and aristocracy. The big one is that all camps guard have chosen to do that. The guards in death camps were voluntary members of SS - the elite German armed group.
Compared to that, not just that aristocracy is hereditary, but they had duties beyond "kill people". They were backbone of army, yes, but still it is not just that.
I think that making comparison between aristocracy and guards in concentration camps is more of political then actual attempt at reasonale historical analysios.
You sure about that? I always got the impression the real problem in the camps, besides the fact they existed etc, was guards enjoying their immoral job and taking liberties. And that is indeed a whole step above.
Actually you're the one who isn't understanding that there is no meaningful difference. Concentration camps are just worse than usual prisons. The biggest difference isn't the institution, it's who is selected to be sent to the camp and that they can never leave.
People in prisons or concentration camps often have to work against their will. This is an accepted form of slavery in our society. The imprisoned often have no enforced rights. A ward can just search your room, take your property and you can't do anything against them. They are allowed to use force to make you obey. Who is going to protect you? The police?
but there's a difference between being a German soldier and manning the death camp. No one takes issue with the German soldiers who invaded France -- they were doing their jobs. The problem is with the people who rounded up the innocent women and children, put them in trains, and then sent them off to die.
You can certainly make an argument that they're the same, but I think there's a pretty clear practical distinction between the two.
The comparison is silly. While the Boer War concentration camps were brutal, they were nothing on par with the Nazis.
In fact “concentration camp” is largely a misnomer. The sizable majority of Holocaust victims were killed in extermination camps, like Treblinka. These never even purported to hold any prisoner population, and simply murdered all prisoners immediately upon arrival.
The British have no shortage of problems. But nothing in their history is even remotely comparable to Hitler.
I think there is some difference between working as a guard in concentration camp and as a toilet cleaner or programmer in HSBC, although HSBC bank was laundering money for drug cartels that also murder people.
They are comparable, though, and that's exactly my point. They're not the _same_ by any stretch of the imagination, but it's just a weaker reading of history to refuse to consider themes that were common to the time period.
The Nazi camps were started for the same reason as the American camps: to contain and control a population believed to be subversive. They were indeed later used as part of an organized genocide, which is very important and makes them far more horrifying on a moral/human level, but it's willful blindness to ignore the deep similarities between a policy of containing and suppressing a racial group, and a policy of containing, suppressing, and exterminating a racial group.
It is an interesting comparison. I wonder if it's because of the sheer numbers that died in the camps or the power of the jewish lobby post world war II.
As others have pointed out, it's important to distinguish concentration camps, whose aim was to hold prisoners, from extermination camps, whose aim was to kill them.
Nazi concentration camps featured forced labor, torture, near starvation, rape, and ultimately ended in death via exhaustion, disease, or execution. Your hyperbole is offensive to anyone whose grandparents or great grandparents actually was in a Nazi concentration camp.
Detention centers in the US have only superficial similarities.
> whereas Jews were rounded up and starved to death
Those are called death camps.
A concentration or internment camp is where you stick people who you don't trust, so you can keep an eye on them. Prisons are essentially a form of concentration camp, but the key distinction is that you have to be found guilty of something to end up in prison. It's probably more accurate to think of a concentration camp as a long term jail.
Compared to that, not just that aristocracy is hereditary, but they had duties beyond "kill people". They were backbone of army, yes, but still it is not just that.
I think that making comparison between aristocracy and guards in concentration camps is more of political then actual attempt at reasonale historical analysios.
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