Were the Hitler's concentration camps worse than present African Jails?

Question

We read Hitler's Concentration camps were bad. But how do they compare with the hell of African Prisons and Remands? Were people in Hitler's camps hardly eat one 'meal' (you cannot even give your dog), sleep on overcrowded mosquito-laden rooms without beddings, for more than 16 hours a day (a room for 16, holding 150), walk without shoes, scanty clothing for weather, no water for drinking and washing, put on unpaid forced labour, cut out completely from outside world, and overall treated something like unwanted animal pests whose daily deaths do not count?

Well... am talking largely about "Sub-Saharan Africa".

It is clear that there are no gas chambers in African Jails, but number of deaths from malnutrition, disease and overcrowding is such high that significant number of prisoners and remandees do not see the end of their normally long sentences. Those who somehow survive, they are again disproportionately having less life expectancy after release.

Answer 1

It's another one of those value judgements. When Pentonville prison was opened in London, the standard of accommodation was significantly higher than the slums from which its inmates came. I suspect that the hell holes of the African prisons aren't a quantum leap from the shanty town hell from whence the prisoners came, whereas the inmates of concentration camps came from mainly bourgeois homes in a sophisticated society.

Answer 2

hmmm let me see....

in Hitler's (tm) concentration camps you get as many beatings as you can take, forced labour where you work until you die of starvation, if you are hungry then you can always eat from the corpse of a fallen friend, there are many of those to choose from. And if you survive long enough and dont accidentally get killed by a stray allied bomb then you can live a permanently mentally scarred life or just commit suicide, or become a homicidal maniac, the choice is yours.

Oh and then there is an easy way out, you could get selected to perform in some medical experiments, some of which are completely pointless like injecting dyes into your eyes to see if you can have your brown eyes turned blue, being fed lethal doses of radiation, and then my personal favourite, being frozen to the edge of death and then brought back to life over and over again, well maybe once or twice until you die, one of the perks of the latter was that a rare number of inmates were brought back to life by a naked nurse, this was the most successful method of resussitation, but not practical for pilots who had been in the cold sea for hours. There were many ways to die, the choice was mostly not the inmates though.

So there you have it, hitlers death camps are by far the most superior, dont accept any modern fakes

Answer 3

Concentration camps were not prisons.They were extremely well organised places for massive annihilation of , not only the Jews but also the Bohemians Gypsies , persons with malformed such as blindness or Mongolian children and all people considered as " Under Man." by the Nazis.It was very rare that new-comers stayed alive more than a couple of days.
I don't know and am not sure if a comparison can be apply.

Answer 4

''By the end of 1943 the Germans closed down the death camps built specifically to exterminate Jews. The death tolls for the camps are as follows: Treblinka, (750,000 Jews); Belzec, (550,000 Jews); Sobibór, (200,000 Jews); Chelmno, (150,000 Jews) and Lublin (also called Majdanek, 50,000 Jews). Auschwitz continued to operate through the summer of 1944; its final death total was about 1 million Jews and 1 million non-Jews. Allied encirclement of Germany was nearly complete in the fall of 1944. The Nazis began dismantling the camps, hoping to cover up their crimes. By the late winter/early spring of 1945, they sent prisoners walking to camps in central Germany. Thousands died in what became known as death marches.'' (http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/timeline/camps.htm)

Hitler's CC's weren't bad, they were indescribable hell holes. They weren't prisons, but death camps. I am German, and when I was at school we visited the former CC Bergen-Belsen, and even 50 years(at the time) after it had been closed down, it was still a haunting place to be ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bergen-Belsen_concentration_camp ). People were taken there for the sole purpose of being killed, whether they were babies, women, disabled, elderly or ever commited a crime in their lifetime. They were stripped of all their belongings, including false teeth, glass eyes, prostetics etc. They were shaved bald and their hair was sold. The conditions they existed in were absolutely appaling. People were used for medical experiments.They went into the gas chambers thinking they were going to have a shower- and never got out alive. All the things you've listed above apply to CC's. However bad you think the CC's were - the reality must have been a 1000 times worse! I am not saying that conditions in African prisons aren't terrible, but the holocaust and the concentration camps are in a league of their own when it comes to human cruelty.

Answer 5

African prisons of the sort you describe sound really terrible. As for Nazi concentration camps, most of the millions that were sent to them only lasted a few days, being sent on to the gas chambers, thence incinerated.

I'm not sure that the two bear a direct comparison.

Answer 6

Hitlers concentration camps were used to exterminate 6 Million of Gods chosen people... Jews they were rapped, gassed, turtured, stripped of all they worked and lived for. They were killed and their body fats used to make soap, gold, silver fillings stripped from teeth! Experimented upon with all sorts of horrible drugs. The Germans who were part of the 3rd Reich were nothing short of Demoniacs. I sincerely do not think your comparison is justifiable... By the way I am an African!

Answer 7

Africa is a huge continent. Which specific country do you mean.
By the way, how are the prisoners in Guantanamo bay ? Still no charges, lawyers etc. ??

Answer 8

Not all jails are the same but they have the same effect on peoples emotions, well being, and social life. It creates loneliness, fear, anxiety, depression and everything negative imaginable.

Answer 9

you cannot compare them two but you can compare hitler's camps with george bush's guantanamo... as hitler and bush are no so different...

Answer 10

If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.