Ideas Toward a Sociology of the Concentration Camp

There are five major possibilities for sociological study of the concentration camp: investigation of the social structure of the concentration camp; the concentration camp within the system of contemporary society; its role among all other modern institutions involving the deprivation of freedom; a comparative study of all instituions ever created for the deprivation of freedom; and a social-psychological study of the concentration camp. The concentration camp is seen as the most recent institution of opprression in which prisoner live without rights and under conditions of extreme want. The determining factors are always ideological and economic. The prisoners always fall into actual, if concealed, slavery carried on by police authorities. The concentration camp reached its most extreme and cruel stage of development in the totalitarian state.