death camp

death camp (plural death camps)

1. A prison camp in which a large number of prisoners die for various reasons, such as starvation, disease, brutality and neglect.
   • 2004, Jeffrey F. Addicott, Terrorism Law: The Rule of Law and the War on Terror, 2nd edition, page 117:

     Included in this figure, since the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, are over 250,000 boat people and 250,000 other civilians who were either ruthlessly murdered outright or who perished in communist death camps set up to "re-educate" non-communists.

   • 2007, John P. C. Matthews, Explosion: The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, page 618:

     Three years after Stalin's death, with ghostly figures returning to Moscow and Leningrad from Stalin's death camps, the leaders in the Kremlin agreed that Stalin's ghost had to be laid to rest if they were to get on with the reforms that would allow them to stay in power.

   • 2007, Steve Bates, Bible Crusade, page 79:

     In America's death camps, 1,500,000 babies annually are put to death in their mother's womb. The war being waged on the womb front killed more children than soldiers in the history of warfare.

2. A facility built during the Holocaust by the Nazis to kill especially the Jewish people through gassing.

• extermination camp

• “death camp” (US) / “death camp” (UK) in Oxford Dictionaries, Oxford University Press.