MetaFilter posts tagged with concentrationcamps

Life in a North Korean Concentration Camp

thisperon — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:03:41 -0800

North Korea's concentration camps reportedly contain over half a million citizens, and is possibly one of the worst cases of systematic human rights abuses occurring in the world today. Ahn Myong Chol, an ex-prison guard, describes the conditions of the inmates of Camp 22, in objective and chilling detail. On medical experiments being performed on prisoners: "....the glass chamber has 3 main subdivisions: one is for blood experiments, another is for poison gas, and the third is for suffocation gas. 3 or 4 people, normally a family, are experimented on. The scientists sit around the edge and watch from above...". Chol's description of camp life, the psychology of being a prison guard and his victims: "If I was in a bad mood, I would find an excuse (to torture.) It's just like pigs or dogs. You could beat them everyday without caring if they lived or died. Everyday. For around 3 years I enjoyed torturing people." Shin Dong Hyuk, a young man who was actually born into a prison camp, is the only known survivor to escape Camp 14. Now in South Korea, he tells the stunning story of what is was like to be born in a prison camp, and the stark contrast of life outside of it. "Mothers get beaten during their work so they come home and beat their kids to relieve stress. We only called our parents mom and dad. There is no caring relationship between the parents and their children like in South Korea. I had never felt it even once."

"A single person can profoundly touch the lives of so many people."

amyms — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 01:03:41 -0800

"Dear Miss Breed..." the letters begin. Clara Estelle Breed was the children's librarian at the San Diego Public Library from 1929 to 1945. When her young Japanese American patrons and their families were forced into relocation camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1942, Miss Breed became their penpal and their lifeline, sending them books and supplies, assisting with various requests, and "serving as a reminder of the possibility for decency and justice in a troubled world." Fifty years later, Miss Breed passed on her collection of letters to Elizabeth Kikuchi Yamada, one of her original correspondents. Ms. Yamada donated them to the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. The online collection includes digital facsimiles [example] of the correspondence, full transcriptions [example] of the letters, and brief biographies [example] of most of the correspondents. The site also includes home movies and oral histories.

American Concentration Camps.

monju_bosatsu — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 14:31:29 -0800

U.S. Concentration Camps: FEMA and the REX 84 Program. There over 800 prison camps in the United States, all fully operational and ready to receive prisoners. They are all staffed and even surrounded by full-time guards, but they are all empty. These camps are to be operated by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) should Martial Law need to be implemented in the United States and all it would take is a presidential signature on a proclamation and the attorney general's signature on a warrant to which a list of names is attached.

Music and Freedom

plep — Wed, 26 Mar 2003 01:12:35 -0800

Shostakovichiana. Documents and articles about one of the twentieth century's greatest composers, some of them focusing on the problems he encountered working under a totalitarian system. Some highlights :- 'Do not judge me too harshly': anti-Communism in Shostakovich's letters; 'You must remember!': Shostakovich's alleged 1937 interrogation; About Shostakovich's 1948 downfall. More related material can be found at the Music under Soviet Rule page.
There are a number of interesting sites dealing with music expression and censorship generally. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has a site on the music of the concentration camps - 'While popular songs dating from before the war remained attractive as escapist fare, the ghetto, camp, and partisan settings also gave rise to a repertoire of new works. ' Here's a Guardian article on the Blue Notes, who 'fought apartheid in South Africa with searing jazz'. Here's a page about the Drapchi 14, Tibetan nuns who 'recorded independence songs and messages to their families on a tape recorder' (and were subsequently punished). Finally, a page on records which were banned from BBC radio during the 1991 Gulf War (example :- 'Walk Like an Egyptian').

U.S. and Canadian WWII Concentration Camps

mediareport — Thu, 06 Feb 2003 13:43:18 -0800

Striking, panoramic photo collages of the ruins of U.S. and Canadian concentration camps used to isolate Japanese-Americans during WWII. Masumi Hayashi's rich site also features documents, personal stories and Shockwave interview clips, a discussion board and data on each camp. And, yes, this post was inspired by U.S. Congressman Howard Coble's recent comment.

tranquileye — Mon, 12 Feb 2001 07:26:57 -0800

The Last Expression project is a forum to explore the roles, functions, meanings and making of art in the Nazi concentration camps of World War II, focusing on the notorious site of Auschwitz-Birkenau. ... It is neither widely recognized in the realm of Holocaust history, nor in the discipline of art history, that concentration camp prisoners -- victims of the Nazis -- produced works of art during their incarceration. [from the Introduction.]