Concentrationcamps are back !

During the Spanish Civil War and in the years following the conflict, around 192,000 prisoners were shot. During the period from 1939 to 1940, hundreds of prisoners were executed per day at their peak. ^[9] Several mass graves were discovered on the grounds of concentration camps. The laborious excavation and identification of the victims has now begun, including in Burgos. A total of 30,000 bodies are said to be lying in mass graves.

Section of the Canal de los presos built by forced labourers in Peñaflor (Seville)

In addition to ideological "re-education" measures, the prisoners were subjected to a brutal regime of forced labor and were organized into battalions for this purpose. The aim was not only to rebuild the infrastructure destroyed by the Spanish Civil War by building railway lines, dams and reservoirs, but also to demonstrate state power aimed at subjugating, humiliating and physically destroying political opponents by using forced labor to build prestige projects such as the Francoist memorial Valle de los Caídos .

A large number of prisoners were also used in the construction of the Canal del Bajo Guadalquivir from 1940 until its completion in 1962. In 2006, the section between La Rinconada and Dos Hermanas was given the name Canal de los Presos ("Canal of the Prisoners") in memory of the victims of the canal's construction .

The children of Republicans were often separated from their families and handed over to the care of the Catholic Church. Current research speaks of 30,000 such cases of politically motivated child abduction. ^[10]

ALBATERA’S concentration camp, discovered only in 2020, is to become an information and interpretation centre.

One of the derelict barrack buildings at the site will be rebuilt and used as the centre, for visitors to learn of the horrors that happened.

The main part of the camp, an enclave measuring only 500 square yards, reportedly kept 16,000 prisoners captive during six months of 1939, at the end of The Spanish Civil War.

They were Republican government officials, military staff, journalists, trade unionists and artists who were captured in the port of Alicante by Franco’s marauding fascist forces as they tried to escape Spain on the ship, Stanbrook.

Prisoners were believed to have been kept outside in the blistering Spanish sun, with hardly any food or drink.

Sde Teiman (Hebrew: שדה תימן) is an Israeli military base located in the Negev desert near the border with the Gaza Strip. During the Israel–Hamas war, its use as a detention camp doubled and gained international attention for its systemic human rights violations against its Palestinian detainees from the strip.^[1][2]

Multiple released Palestinian detainees have testified they were subjected to psychological and physical torture as well as sexual violence by Israeli soldiers. Multiple reports also speak of prisoners who suffered from medical neglect for injuries sustained, which led to cases of arm and leg amputations. Their testimonies have been corroborated by whistleblowing Israeli staff and a CNN investigation.^[1]

In one highly publicized incident, leaked CCTV footage showed Israeli soldiers gang raping a Palestinian detainee with a metal rod that caused him serious injuries to his anus and lungs.^[3][4][5] The leak occurred few weeks after several soldiers suspected of the abuse of a prisoner were detained for questioning, leading to Israeli right-wing protesters and parliamentarians illegally breaking into the camp in protest in late July 2024.^[6]

Referred to by some as "the Israeli Guantanamo",^[7][8][9] Camp 1391 was kept secret in such a manner as to be even unknown to David Libai, Minister of Justice in Yitzhak Rabin's government and member of the secret services related ministerial committee.^[8] According to Leah Tsemel, an Israeli lawyer who specialises in advising Palestinians, "Anyone entering the prison can be made to disappear, potentially forever, it's no different from the jails run by tinpot South American dictators."^[7]

According to accounts of former captives, the detainees were led into the facility blindfolded, and kept in cells (most are 2 m × 2 m) with no natural light. Two smaller cells (1.25 m × 1.25 m) with heavy steel doors and black or red walls, and almost no light, were used for solitary confinement. Some of the cells did not have adequate toilet facilities and the guards controlled the running water.^[8] A former inmate described to al-Araby al-Jadeed his mistreatment in 1391 after being transferred from Huwarra military camp, including extended isolation from other inmates, suffocation during sleep, interrogation period extending beyond 24 hours and extreme lack of food.^[6]

Mustafa Dirani, an Amal commander^[10] who was captured by the Israelis in May 1994 and released in 2004 as part of a prisoner swap,^[11] has filed a suit in Tel Aviv's district court claiming he was sexually abused in the prison.^[8] It has been acknowledged by the government of Israel that "within the framework of a military police investigation the suspicion arose that an interrogator who questioned the complainant threatened to perform a sexual act on the complainant".^[4]

Inmates were not allowed visits at the facility from the Red Cross, nor were any other independent organization permitted to inspect the site.^[9] The prisoners were not told where they were, nor were their families or lawyers.^[8]

The concentration camp at Dachau was opened 22 March 1933, with the arrival of about 200 prisoners from Stadelheim Prison in Munich and the Landsberg fortress (where Hitler had written Mein Kampf during his imprisonment).^[28] Himmler announced in the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten newspaper that the camp could hold up to 5,000 people, and described it as "the first concentration camp for political prisoners" to be used to restore calm to Germany.^[29] It became the first regular concentration camp established by the coalition government of the National Socialist German Worker's Party (Nazi Party) and the German National People's Party (dissolved on 6 July 1933).

Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and emigrants were sent to Dachau after the 1935 passage of the Nuremberg Laws which institutionalized racial discrimination.^[30] In early 1937, the SS, using prisoner labor, initiated construction of a large complex capable of holding 6,000 prisoners. The construction was officially completed in mid-August 1938.^[16] More political opponents, and over 11,000 German and Austrian Jews were sent to the camp after the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938. Sinti and Roma in the hundreds were sent to the camp in 1939, and over 13,000 prisoners were sent to the camp from Poland in 1940.^[30][31] Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross inspected the camp in 1935 and 1938 and documented the harsh conditions.^[32]