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Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show

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Speaker 1: where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.

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Speaker 1: I'm Noah Feldman. Welcome to this week's program, where we're

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Speaker 1: going to talk about one of the most challenging and

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Speaker 1: controversial topics that I can think of, namely concentration camps.

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Speaker 1: The phrase alone is enough to strike terror in your heart,

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Speaker 1: and controversially, this phrase, so closely associated with Nazi Germany

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Speaker 1: and with the Holocaust, has been used by some critics

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Speaker 1: to refer to the current migrant detention facilities that the

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Speaker 1: United States government is using to detain people at our

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Speaker 1: southern border. To discuss the history and the politics, I'm

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Speaker 1: very pleased to be joined today by Andrea Pitzer. Andrea

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Speaker 1: is a journalist who loves to unearth lost history, and

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Speaker 1: for our purposes today, the lost history that she's uncovered

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Speaker 1: is that of the concentration camp itself. Her book, One

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Speaker 1: Long Night, A Global History of Concentration Camps is a

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Speaker 1: deep dive into the term concentration camp, where it came from,

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Speaker 1: and where it's going today. And she's also been an

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Speaker 1: outspoken critic of the Trump administration's to tension policy. Andrea

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Speaker 1: I want to start just by telling you my own

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Speaker 1: story of how I came to expand on the uses

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Speaker 1: of the term. I'm Jewish. Like a lot of Jews,

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Speaker 1: I grew up hearing the phrase concentration camps and never

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Speaker 1: distinguishing it from death camps or anything else that the

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Speaker 1: Nazis may have done. And like a lot of people,

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Speaker 1: I had teachers who had camp tattoos on their arms,

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Speaker 1: and they and others used the term concentration camps in

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Speaker 1: a kind of generic way. And then I realized that

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Speaker 1: it was a term that originally had something to do

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Speaker 1: with a concentration of people, and that got me looking

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Speaker 1: into the history a little bit. And then when your

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Speaker 1: book came out, I thought, this is so great. Someone's

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Speaker 1: actually doing this in a systematic way. So I guess

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Speaker 1: I want to start by asking, is it the case

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Speaker 1: that the first use in the English language, at least

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Speaker 1: of concentration camps dates to the Bore War, the rebellion

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Speaker 1: against British authority in South Africa. Well, strangely enough, the

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Speaker 1: phrase itself goes back to at least the middle of

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Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, at least in the British press, and

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Speaker 1: it's possible it's appeared some other language that I haven't found,

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Speaker 1: but the earliest version of it in the English language

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Speaker 1: press I could find was in the mid eighteen hundreds

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Speaker 1: in the Times of London, and it was actually a

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Speaker 1: military term that meant something a little different. It was

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Speaker 1: literally the concentration of forces, sort of getting ready for

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Speaker 1: an offensive or a defensive move or a battle of

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Speaker 1: some kind. So it had this military term for military

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Speaker 1: people before it transitioned to mean concentrating non military people

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Speaker 1: and doing this to civilians and isolating them from society

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Speaker 1: in some way. The idea of the concentration of forces

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Speaker 1: is usually associated with Napoleon's doctrine of war. Put a

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Speaker 1: lot of troops together in the same spot and go

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Speaker 1: for it, and you're likely to overwhelm your enemy. So

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Speaker 1: it was the term being used by the Times of

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Speaker 1: London to describe a place where troops could be brought

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Speaker 1: together in preparation for some kind of a very focused

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Speaker 1: and concentrated attack. Exactly. There's some connection between those ideas

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Speaker 1: of concentration because if so, sort of fascinatingly, that connects

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Speaker 1: up the whole idea of modernity and concentration camp, which

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Speaker 1: will obviously get to with the idea of modern war doctrine,

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Speaker 1: albeit in a very indirect way. Well it is indirect

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Speaker 1: in that instance, but it's fairly direct. When we have

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Speaker 1: the first decade of camps, they are all sort of

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Speaker 1: eighteen ninety six and the ten years that follows. All

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Speaker 1: these camps are part of a military objective. Initially, they

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Speaker 1: are doing something to civilians as part of a war

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Speaker 1: strategy to defeat some kind of insurgency, and so I

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Speaker 1: think there's this very natural move that happens. It's a

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Speaker 1: very unfortunate move, but you can see the evolution of

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Speaker 1: this modern war strategy bleeding over into how civilians are

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Speaker 1: going to be treated. And you know, there's this moment

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Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety six where we sort of get this

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Speaker 1: idea reconcentration of civilians in Cuba under the Spanish Empire.

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Speaker 1: But even before that you had Spanish generals and British

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Speaker 1: generals talking about rounding people up, talking about using this

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Speaker 1: as a widespread policy, and I'm sure it happened sometimes,

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Speaker 1: but as a really definite war strategy that was very clear,

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Speaker 1: and people understood that it would cause suffering to do

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Speaker 1: this to civilians. That's at the very end of the

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Speaker 1: nineteenth centuries when that idea emerges, and this eighteen ninety

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Speaker 1: six moments in Cuba that you were describing, that's before

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Speaker 1: the Spanish American Wars. What was the context and who

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Speaker 1: was doing it in what language were they doing it in.

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Speaker 1: So the Spanish Empire had Cuba as its colony for

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Speaker 1: quite a long time, and Cubans had been resisting that

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Speaker 1: for quite a long time, and really from the middle

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Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century to the Spanish American War itself,

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Speaker 1: and then of course even after the Cuban people peasants

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Speaker 1: mostly were seeking independence, and there were several rebellions that

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Speaker 1: would sort of flare up and subside, and the eighteen

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Speaker 1: nineties one flared up and the governor general there at

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Speaker 1: the time said in a letter to Spain, Look, the

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Speaker 1: only way we're going to really end this and defeat

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Speaker 1: these guys is if we sweep all the peasants off

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Speaker 1: the countryside, put them in fortified cities behind barbed wire,

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Speaker 1: and burn the countryside. This is kind of a transitional

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Speaker 1: version of the camp because what they're doing is they're

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Speaker 1: pushing them out of the countryside and into cities that

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Speaker 1: they're holding and so people could come and go from

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Speaker 1: the town, but they had no means to eat. Their

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Speaker 1: labor was basically agrarian labor. They didn't have skills that

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Speaker 1: could be used in a city, and so you ended

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Speaker 1: up with this very strange, bifurcated town where people on

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Speaker 1: the edges were literally collapsing in the street and dying

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Speaker 1: from disease and hunger, and the rest of the city

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Speaker 1: was going on about its business. And so it isn't

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Speaker 1: till the Bore War, which we get to very shortly after,

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Speaker 1: that you have those sort of tense cities out from

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Speaker 1: towns that we think of as a very classic version

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Speaker 1: of what's going to come. What were the British actually

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Speaker 1: trying to accomplish with their tense city concentration camps during

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Speaker 1: the Boer War as they fought the Afrikaans speaking Boar's

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Speaker 1: efforts at establishing their own state. Well, actually, when you

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Speaker 1: look back at the war strategy in Cuba in Southern

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Speaker 1: Africa at that time, it was quite similar. You were

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Speaker 1: trying to defeat these sort of guerrilla forces and they

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Speaker 1: were using barbed wire. And it's worth noting that the

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Speaker 1: patenting and mass production of barbed wire is a really

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Speaker 1: important piece of what made this kind of detention possible,

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Speaker 1: because you just didn't need that many guards once you

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Speaker 1: could really hold people. But the British were basically using

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Speaker 1: barbed wire and the strategy of sectioning off parts of

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Speaker 1: the terrain and then clearing it. And so if they

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Speaker 1: could sort of clear an area and hold it, then

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Speaker 1: they can move on to clear the next area. But

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Speaker 1: in order to do that, they needed to make sure

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Speaker 1: that people out in the countryside weren't feeding or harboring

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Speaker 1: or hiding the people that were fighting them. And so

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Speaker 1: the approach that was, well, let's just get rid of

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Speaker 1: all the civilians entirely from the district. Andrea, you know,

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Speaker 1: you said something fascinating in there. I mean, you've said

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Speaker 1: many fascinating thing as already, but you mentioned that barbed

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Speaker 1: wire was crucial to the process. That if you could

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Speaker 1: put people behind barbed wire, which you could erect presumably

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Speaker 1: very cheaply, unlike building a wall, then you could keep

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Speaker 1: them there with fewer guards. And so as you were speaking,

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Speaker 1: I just quickly googled and discovered what I had not known,

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Speaker 1: which is that barbed wire was first patented in eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty seven and then improved with a new patent in

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Speaker 1: eighteen seventy four, So barbed wire was pretty new as

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Speaker 1: a technology. Would it be an exaggeration to say that

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Speaker 1: without the technology of barbed wire we couldn't have had

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Speaker 1: the modern concentration camp. And I think that's absolutely true.

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Speaker 1: I think the other thing we have to add in

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Speaker 1: it wasn't quite as important in the first four or

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Speaker 1: five years, but it became quite important later, was also

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Speaker 1: the mass production of automatic weapons. Because if the barbed

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Speaker 1: wire slows people ability to escape, and then you have

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Speaker 1: guards that can kill a lot of people in a

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Speaker 1: very short burst, then it sort of locks the prisoners

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Speaker 1: inside the detention camp. And so I would say that

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Speaker 1: between those two inventions and sort of mass productions, because

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Speaker 1: it really had to be able to get a lot

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Speaker 1: of it to a far flung place to make this work.

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Speaker 1: There were other kinds of detention before, some of which

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Speaker 1: were really close to what concentration camps would end up

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Speaker 1: looking like Native American reservations in the US. We can

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Speaker 1: think of as by far the very common precursor for

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Speaker 1: concentration camps, and in some cases almost the only difference

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Speaker 1: was this ability to detain people to actually hold them

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Speaker 1: in place without assigning a huge guard force. And I

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Speaker 1: think that that's where we cross the line over some

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Speaker 1: equally horrific, sometimes more horrific versions of detention that happened

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Speaker 1: previously slavery forced labor camps, Native American reservations. We cross

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Speaker 1: into this modern idea of detention not to steal people's labor,

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Speaker 1: not to steal their land, but detention behind barbed wire

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Speaker 1: for detention's sake. That marks the concentration camp idea. The

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Speaker 1: other thing that I thought was so fascinating when you

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Speaker 1: were describing how the techniques of the British Hues and

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Speaker 1: the Boer War were similar to those that the Spanish

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Speaker 1: hues in eighteen ninety six in Cuba, was that it's

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Speaker 1: a reminder that much as is the case today, where

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Speaker 1: a theory of counterinsurgency becomes popular and then it spreads

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Speaker 1: from one military to another military to another military. Similarly,

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Speaker 1: already in the nineteenth century, in the early twentieth century,

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Speaker 1: you had experimental military efforts to manage guerrilla warfarewell we

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Speaker 1: today call insurgency, and one imperial power would imitate what

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Speaker 1: another imperial power was doing. So it's sort of interesting

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Speaker 1: to see ideas about military strategy, including the concentration camp

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Speaker 1: moving from place to place. Well, there's two things with that,

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Speaker 1: And I think that the idea of the moving is important.

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Speaker 1: This is an international thing from very early on. At

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Speaker 1: the same time, when you have the same tools, when

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Speaker 1: you have the same kind of training and you have

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Speaker 1: the same technology at your disposal, things also kind of

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Speaker 1: independently spring up. So sometimes there's a direct influence and

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Speaker 1: sometimes it's just everybody has a hammer at hand, and hey,

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Speaker 1: you know what you can do with a hammer. I

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Speaker 1: think that that's a fascinating thing. But the other thing

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Speaker 1: is that you were talking about counterinsurgency strategy. Today we

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Speaker 1: have so much concern and so much infrastructure built around

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Speaker 1: dealing with this idea of terror and terrorism. It's important

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Speaker 1: to note that concentration camps rise out of counterinsurgency strategy

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Speaker 1: and they never really abandon it. What happens is that

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Speaker 1: who is game goes from people in battle and people

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Speaker 1: who might be actually showing up to shoot you or

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Speaker 1: kill people in your view of what's happening in the world.

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Speaker 1: It goes to people who are in society next to you,

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Speaker 1: who aren't wielding web but are somehow undermining and destroying

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Speaker 1: your society. But this idea of rooting out that dangerous

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Speaker 1: dissident element that is going to destroy your society is

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Speaker 1: at the heart of why concentration camps become acceptable and

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Speaker 1: used and are used still today. That seems like an

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Speaker 1: excellent point of transition to World War Two. And let's

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Speaker 1: start with the Nazis use of concentration camps, and then

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Speaker 1: we can also talk about the Japanese American internment camps.

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Speaker 1: You hinted. I think, if I'm understanding you correctly, that

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Speaker 1: from the idea that you gather up and concentrate and

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Speaker 1: imprison behind barbed wire the people who you consider to

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Speaker 1: be a threat in a counterinsurgency, you can naturally evolve

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Speaker 1: to imprisoning the people whom you see as a threat

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Speaker 1: because of who they are, and that could lead to

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Speaker 1: the interment of political prisoners, which was the Nazis first move,

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Speaker 1: and then ultimately to people who are seen as kind

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Speaker 1: of existential enemies like the Jews. Is is that the

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Speaker 1: process that took place in Germany? It is, But I

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Speaker 1: think there's this transition moment we want to be sure

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Speaker 1: not to skip, which is those first far flung colonial camps,

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Speaker 1: which I will say held mostly women and children and

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Speaker 1: had horrific death tolls I mean tens of thousands, more

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Speaker 1: than one hundred thousand. That really shocked the world, and

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Speaker 1: it was seen as a barbaric thing to use these camps.

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Speaker 1: But what made it reasonable and by the time we

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Speaker 1: got to the twenties or thirties for countries to start

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Speaker 1: using them again, was that they were used in World

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Speaker 1: War One. So it goes from this very discredited brutal

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Speaker 1: strategy of military war in the battlefield areas to in

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Speaker 1: World War One, the idea sprang up again and it

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Speaker 1: moved from out in far flung areas into the centers

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Speaker 1: of power. So you had detention camps. Let's say you

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Speaker 1: were German and World War One broke out and you

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Speaker 1: were in London, you were put into a camp there,

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Speaker 1: you were put into a civilian camp in the area,

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Speaker 1: and they had them in Berlin. And by the end

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Speaker 1: of the war they had literally covered six continents and

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Speaker 1: the Red Cross was investigating and visiting hundreds of different

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Speaker 1: locations in dozens of countries. You had a bureaucracy of

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Speaker 1: detention show up, and the death tolls from these camps

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Speaker 1: because everybody wanted to be seen as running the ones

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Speaker 1: that were fair and just. It was a real propaganda

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Speaker 1: war that was going on. By the end of that war,

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Speaker 1: they had rehabilitated the idea of this kind of detention

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Speaker 1: and it was called concentration camps at the time. What

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Speaker 1: we call it now is internment. And there was this

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Speaker 1: idea that internment was a reasonable thing to do and

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Speaker 1: that it didn't cause harm and that everybody didn't have

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Speaker 1: to die. So after World War One, concentration camps are

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Speaker 1: used everywhere. It becomes perfectly legitimate to lock up civilians

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Speaker 1: in anywhere in the world, essentially, and that's where you

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Speaker 1: end up with the early Soviet camps, and then in

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Speaker 1: the thirties the Nazi camps. When they first began, they

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Speaker 1: looked very much like something that had been done before.

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Speaker 1: And I think the alarm bells did not go off

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Speaker 1: in part because the Nazis hadn't yet figured out that

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Speaker 1: camps would be at the heart of the genocide that

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Speaker 1: they wanted to conduct. But also alarm bells didn't go

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Speaker 1: off because people saw this, they had seen it all

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Speaker 1: the time. It didn't look that different than things that

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Speaker 1: they saw unfold around them in the twenties and thirties

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Speaker 1: and during World War One, Andrew, can we talk about

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Speaker 1: citizenship in that crucial transitional phase that you just described,

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Speaker 1: because during World War One, correct me if I'm wrong,

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Speaker 1: it seems as though these slightly better internment camps or

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Speaker 1: concentration camps, the ones that were, as you said, rehabilitated

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Speaker 1: the reputation of the camps were designed for basically civilians

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Speaker 1: who were citizens of a country y're at war with,

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Speaker 1: so an enemy's noncombatants. So was citizenship the primary criterion

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Speaker 1: during World War One for the creation of these camps.

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Speaker 1: It very much was. There's hundreds of years of laws

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Speaker 1: on the books about in most countries use them about

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Speaker 1: this idea of enemy aliens. If somebody is alien to

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Speaker 1: your country and there's a war, you can do just

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Speaker 1: about anything with them. And that's been true for a

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Speaker 1: long time. But what was different that it had been

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Speaker 1: more largely applied to individuals. So if you were an

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Speaker 1: individual enemy alien in the eyes of the law, and

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Speaker 1: there was some suspicion about you, there was great leeway

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Speaker 1: in what could be done to you. But World War

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Speaker 1: One marks this moment where you don't have to have

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Speaker 1: individual suspicions about that person. We're going to apply that

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Speaker 1: alien law to whole groups of people, regardless of their

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Speaker 1: motivations or their actions, or whether you think their spy.

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Speaker 1: We just are going to sort of push that over

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Speaker 1: the brink and use that existing law, and we're going

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Speaker 1: to lock up vast numbers of people. So then once

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Speaker 1: you're willing to do that to one group of people,

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Speaker 1: what history teaches us is you just have to find

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Speaker 1: the group you want to target and either take away

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Speaker 1: their citizenship or somehow move them outside those protections. And

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Speaker 1: so from World War One on, the process really becomes

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Speaker 1: how do you strip those rights of citizenship away from

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Speaker 1: people so that you can do something to escapegoat them

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Speaker 1: and lock them up. You're drawing a straight line year,

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Speaker 1: I think too, we'll come back to the Nazis, but

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Speaker 1: drawing a straight line here to the Japanese American internment camps,

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Speaker 1: because after all, those included a combination of people with

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Speaker 1: different kinds of legal status. They were naturalized people from

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Speaker 1: Japan who are US citizens, there were some natural born

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Speaker 1: US citizens who were the children of people from Japan.

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Speaker 1: And then of course there were some people of the

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Speaker 1: older generation who were in fact themselves still Japanese citizens

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Speaker 1: and fit in some broader way under this enemy alien

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Speaker 1: category because after all, the United States and Japan World War,

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Speaker 1: but then all of those groups get lumped together in

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Speaker 1: the exclusion order from the West Coast and then ultimately

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Speaker 1: in the interment camps, which are actually called concentration camps.

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Speaker 1: So that sounds like it's in connection with this idea

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Speaker 1: of the enemy alien being being locked up. And obviously,

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Speaker 1: you know, not to give too much of a spoiler alert,

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Speaker 1: but we are going to talk a little bit later

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Speaker 1: on about the contemporary camps of the United States is

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Speaker 1: using to hold non citizens and undocumented persons. There's obviously

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Speaker 1: a citizen ship component that's crucial there as well. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this idea of the alien and the citizen becomes so

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Speaker 1: central to all of it. And it's worth noting that

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Speaker 1: in World War Two as well, there was very little

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Speaker 1: in the way of any threat from this community, and

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Speaker 1: in fact, naval intelligence road to report saying we don't

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Speaker 1: need to lock people up. And it's fascinating to me

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Speaker 1: this history in which you had the Jay Edgar Hoover

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Speaker 1: of the FBI against the idea of internment. You had

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Speaker 1: the Attorney General at the time against the idea of internment.

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Speaker 1: You had Roosevelt initially not wanting to run concentration camps

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Speaker 1: to put this whole community in. But it became this

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Speaker 1: political fight. It became some people argue an economic fight

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Speaker 1: over the really productive and fertile lands that were being

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Speaker 1: farmed by this community. And certainly what we see in

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Speaker 1: every concentration camp setting arose here too, which was the

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Speaker 1: useful vilification of a group of people. So if you

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Speaker 1: vilify this group, if you demonize these groups, what can

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Speaker 1: you extract from that politically? And it turned out there

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Speaker 1: were a lot of people that could extract things politically,

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Speaker 1: and so everybody thinks of this as a panic response.

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Speaker 1: So we locked these people up in camps. That was wrong,

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Speaker 1: but they didn't know better. They knew better, and it

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Speaker 1: was this systemic thing that happens again and again with

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Speaker 1: camps that sort of steamrolled it and took it the

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Speaker 1: other direction toward incarceration. You mentioned earlier that in Nazi Germany,

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Speaker 1: the initial concentration of Jews was not focused yet on

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Speaker 1: what came to be called the final solution of ultimately

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Speaker 1: murdering and eliminating the Jews of Europe, but initially was

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Speaker 1: part of a not exactly an anti insurgency strategy, because

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Speaker 1: there was no Jewish insurgency, but rather of a let's

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Speaker 1: gather up people who might we perceive as hostile to us.

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Speaker 1: It's a long and complex story, but would you give

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Speaker 1: us just a shortened version, a compressed version of how

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Speaker 1: the concentration camps that you've been describing from the eighteen

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Speaker 1: nineties through the nineteen thirties sort of bleed into the

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Speaker 1: creation of actual death camps in World War Two. This

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Speaker 1: is the question that is real at the heart of

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Speaker 1: the issue that today people are wrestling with on what

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Speaker 1: do you call a concentration camp? What gets to be

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Speaker 1: called a concentration camp? And while that issue goes back

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Speaker 1: actually more than one hundred years, people have debated this

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Speaker 1: question these first years of Nazi camps, I think can

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Speaker 1: help make it clearer for us. In those first years,

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Speaker 1: it was a terror strategy employed by the Nazis to

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Speaker 1: stifle descent, and I don't think most people realize that

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Speaker 1: German Jews were not rounded up in groups to be

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Speaker 1: sent to concentration camps until Kristallnacht near the end of

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Speaker 1: nineteen thirty eight, So those camps existed for five years,

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Speaker 1: five and a half years really before you had mass

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Speaker 1: round up of Jews. What happens before then is exactly

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Speaker 1: what you're saying, the rounding up of dissidents, the rounding

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Speaker 1: up actually off homosexuals, the rounding up of people who

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Speaker 1: were seen as vagrants, gypsies, what we would now today

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Speaker 1: call roma and centie. People were rounded up that way.

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Speaker 1: And in those first years, the Jews are being attacked

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Speaker 1: by the Nazis in Germany, but it's mostly through the law.

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Speaker 1: They are stripping them of citizenship. They are saying you

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Speaker 1: can't work in a hospital, you can't use a hospital,

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Speaker 1: you can't hold a professorship at a public university. And

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Speaker 1: it isn't until I believe, and certainly there's room for

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Speaker 1: a lot of different ideas. But after Kristall knocked, when

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Speaker 1: they arrested tens of thousands of Jews and held them

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Speaker 1: in camps, that the world really didn't do anything, and

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Speaker 1: they ended up releasing. Actually those first five years and

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Speaker 1: even after Kristall, more than ninety percent of those Jews

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Speaker 1: were released, there was horrible violence done. Some people were killed,

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Speaker 1: so I'm not minimizing that terror of the Jewish community

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Speaker 1: at all, But even then, the camps were not an

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Speaker 1: extermination tool at that point. It isn't until they still

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Speaker 1: have members of the Jewish community that are not leaving,

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Speaker 1: and at that point they can't leave. No countries will

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Speaker 1: take them. There's almost no country that is willing to

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Speaker 1: harbor Jews at that point, and the Nazis realized that

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Speaker 1: they're not going to be able to push this community

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Speaker 1: out of Germany. And then, of course, when Hitler invades

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Speaker 1: Germany is moving through terrain in which there are whole

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Speaker 1: towns that are majority Jewish. So instead of the one

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Speaker 1: or two percent that are estimated German Jews who have

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Speaker 1: been before the war, they suddenly have these vast Jewish

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Speaker 1: communities to deal with, and what are they going to

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Speaker 1: do with that? And this is where we end up

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Speaker 1: with the debate that resolves in the idea of this

396
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Speaker 1: final solution. And I don't think you can get to

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Speaker 1: that death camp system without those concentration camps being opened

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Speaker 1: for years beforehand, with them developing strategies, with them looking

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Speaker 1: at tactics and techniques of control, and starting to experiment

400
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Speaker 1: with how do you kill a lot of people. I

401
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Speaker 1: don't think that you can get to the death camps

402
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Speaker 1: without having those non death camps in place. And it's

403
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Speaker 1: those non death camps that I'm calling concentration camps, because

404
00:21:55,516 --> 00:21:59,676
Speaker 1: the extermination camps were simply meant to kill as many

405
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Speaker 1: people as quickly as he could, bringing bodies in, executing them,

406
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Speaker 1: and getting the bodies out. In fact, I remember, actually

407
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Speaker 1: very vidly when I was a student, having an older

408
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Speaker 1: scholar explained to me why it was that we hear

409
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Speaker 1: the name Auschwitz all the time. Was the largest of

410
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Speaker 1: the concentration camps ultimately, and so rarely hear the names

411
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Speaker 1: of camps which were pure extermination camps like Bell Jettes

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Speaker 1: would be a great example of one that's not a

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Speaker 1: household name, but at which hundreds of thousands of Jews

414
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Speaker 1: were murdered. And he explained to me that the reason

415
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Speaker 1: was that many many people survived Auschwitz when liberation took place,

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Speaker 1: that is to say, many people died. Of course, huge

417
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Speaker 1: numbers of people died, but when liberation came, they were

418
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Speaker 1: still people alive because it was a labor camp, not

419
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Speaker 1: purely a deathcamp. There was an attached death camp as well,

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Speaker 1: but at a place like bell Jets, ninety nine point

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Speaker 1: nine percent of the people who came through the door

422
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Speaker 1: were immediately murdered, and so there weren't survivors to say

423
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Speaker 1: I survived this camp, or tiny numbers of survivors, and

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Speaker 1: so as a consequence, those are not as salient in

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Speaker 1: our minds. And I think that I've always thought that

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Speaker 1: that may be partly the explanation for why in popular

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00:23:09,236 --> 00:23:14,036
Speaker 1: language we often don't distinguish concentration camps or deathcamp from deathcamps.

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Speaker 1: It's because the survivors whom we were fortunate enough to

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00:23:16,916 --> 00:23:20,196
Speaker 1: know were mostly survivors of concentration camps rather than of

430
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Speaker 1: pure death camps. I think you're absolutely right. Auschwitz represents

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Speaker 1: something that in people's minds is the epitome of the

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Speaker 1: death camp, but it actually is one that made the

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Speaker 1: transition and continued as a concentration camp even while it

434
00:23:37,436 --> 00:23:40,316
Speaker 1: was a death camp. And I think that that's the

435
00:23:40,436 --> 00:23:43,316
Speaker 1: lesson to learn, is that it is actually possible to

436
00:23:43,396 --> 00:23:46,796
Speaker 1: go from one to the other. And while I don't

437
00:23:46,836 --> 00:23:52,596
Speaker 1: think the particular centuries old hatred of Jews and political

438
00:23:52,596 --> 00:23:57,236
Speaker 1: manipulation of that that happened worldwide, especially in Europe in

439
00:23:57,516 --> 00:24:00,676
Speaker 1: the centuries before the Holocaust is going to be replicated

440
00:24:00,716 --> 00:24:04,596
Speaker 1: in the US, or in Russia or in China. I

441
00:24:04,636 --> 00:24:08,596
Speaker 1: think that there are pre existing hatreds and prejudices everywhere,

442
00:24:09,156 --> 00:24:11,196
Speaker 1: and even if we think that they will never culminate

443
00:24:11,236 --> 00:24:14,196
Speaker 1: in something like the deaths that happened in the Holocaust.

444
00:24:14,756 --> 00:24:18,236
Speaker 1: Auschwitz is this instrumental point to realize that it is

445
00:24:18,276 --> 00:24:21,236
Speaker 1: possible to make that leap. And why would we want

446
00:24:21,276 --> 00:24:24,236
Speaker 1: to have the concentration camp there as the setting from

447
00:24:24,276 --> 00:24:27,876
Speaker 1: which something more horrible can come? So now I want

448
00:24:27,876 --> 00:24:33,916
Speaker 1: to transition Andrea from this fascinating, important, searing history to

449
00:24:33,956 --> 00:24:39,156
Speaker 1: the contemporary political debate over the border detention facilities that

450
00:24:39,236 --> 00:24:41,956
Speaker 1: the US has built and has been using extensively. In

451
00:24:41,996 --> 00:24:45,836
Speaker 1: recent months and years. You've been very vocal, as someone

452
00:24:45,876 --> 00:24:48,836
Speaker 1: who has written the leading history on this, about how

453
00:24:48,956 --> 00:24:52,076
Speaker 1: you see these current internment camps. In the New York

454
00:24:52,076 --> 00:24:54,796
Speaker 1: Review of Books, for example, you wrote a piece the

455
00:24:54,836 --> 00:24:59,116
Speaker 1: title was quote some suburb of Hell America's new concentration

456
00:24:59,156 --> 00:25:01,396
Speaker 1: camp system. Did first of all, did they give you

457
00:25:01,436 --> 00:25:03,996
Speaker 1: a say in that title? Was it where at least

458
00:25:03,996 --> 00:25:07,396
Speaker 1: have supervisory authority? I did not, which is normal in journalism.

459
00:25:07,396 --> 00:25:09,316
Speaker 1: So I don't. I don't take issue with that. Often

460
00:25:09,356 --> 00:25:10,876
Speaker 1: don't get to pick your headlines, but I don't have

461
00:25:10,916 --> 00:25:14,116
Speaker 1: a problem. Yeah, but you're okay with it. So tell us,

462
00:25:14,196 --> 00:25:16,556
Speaker 1: first of all, what your position has been on the

463
00:25:16,796 --> 00:25:20,716
Speaker 1: obviously extraordinarily contentious question of how these terms should be

464
00:25:20,836 --> 00:25:25,396
Speaker 1: used today. So, the definition in my book of a

465
00:25:25,436 --> 00:25:29,476
Speaker 1: concentration camp was the masked attention of civilians without trial

466
00:25:30,076 --> 00:25:32,356
Speaker 1: on the basis of identity, and that could be a

467
00:25:32,356 --> 00:25:38,516
Speaker 1: religious identity, political identity, racial or ethnic identity. And so literally,

468
00:25:38,956 --> 00:25:43,316
Speaker 1: from the moment that President Trump declared his candidacy came

469
00:25:43,356 --> 00:25:48,596
Speaker 1: down the escalator. We immediately heard in twenty fifteen the

470
00:25:48,716 --> 00:25:53,036
Speaker 1: rhetoric of Mexicans as rapists. I mean, we soon got

471
00:25:53,036 --> 00:25:55,396
Speaker 1: into this question of how many people was he actually

472
00:25:55,396 --> 00:25:57,996
Speaker 1: calling animals that were souves of the border, and arguments

473
00:25:57,996 --> 00:26:02,196
Speaker 1: over how big that group was. But this dehumanizing rhetoric

474
00:26:02,236 --> 00:26:04,716
Speaker 1: of people over the southern border literally started from the

475
00:26:04,756 --> 00:26:07,716
Speaker 1: moment the candidacy began. And when you have somebody with

476
00:26:07,756 --> 00:26:11,516
Speaker 1: a clear animus, it really sets the tone for something

477
00:26:11,556 --> 00:26:14,876
Speaker 1: that is very clearly a policy of exclusion and elimination

478
00:26:15,436 --> 00:26:20,236
Speaker 1: and really motivated by the very profound things that have

479
00:26:20,316 --> 00:26:25,596
Speaker 1: started concentration camps. And so if everything we're allowed to

480
00:26:25,636 --> 00:26:29,996
Speaker 1: operate without that animus and without that motivating factor, you

481
00:26:29,996 --> 00:26:32,596
Speaker 1: wouldn't get to what we have. You don't get to

482
00:26:32,716 --> 00:26:37,796
Speaker 1: what we have by having a rational, realistic decision about

483
00:26:37,836 --> 00:26:40,076
Speaker 1: what is the best way to do this, Although that

484
00:26:40,076 --> 00:26:42,556
Speaker 1: would be disputed by if we had someone you know,

485
00:26:42,876 --> 00:26:44,836
Speaker 1: in the studio from the Department of Homeland Security, from

486
00:26:44,836 --> 00:26:46,836
Speaker 1: the Trumpama decision, they would say something different. I mean,

487
00:26:46,876 --> 00:26:48,836
Speaker 1: I'm not saying I would buy it, but they would

488
00:26:48,876 --> 00:26:52,356
Speaker 1: clearly take the view that there is genuinely a huge

489
00:26:52,436 --> 00:26:56,076
Speaker 1: number of people crossing the border, that there is a

490
00:26:56,196 --> 00:26:59,276
Speaker 1: need to detain because otherwise people will will escape into

491
00:26:59,316 --> 00:27:01,236
Speaker 1: the into the United States and will not be found.

492
00:27:01,476 --> 00:27:04,476
Speaker 1: I mean, and that once you're detaining large numbers of people,

493
00:27:04,676 --> 00:27:06,916
Speaker 1: you need some mechanism for doing so. Again, I'm not

494
00:27:06,956 --> 00:27:08,876
Speaker 1: saying we have to accept that argument, but they would

495
00:27:08,876 --> 00:27:11,116
Speaker 1: make that argument. And so it seems worrisome to me

496
00:27:11,156 --> 00:27:13,116
Speaker 1: that we would use the term concentration camp or not

497
00:27:13,276 --> 00:27:16,116
Speaker 1: use it based on who's right on the facts of

498
00:27:16,156 --> 00:27:19,476
Speaker 1: whether these camps are in fact necessary. So, first of all,

499
00:27:20,436 --> 00:27:22,316
Speaker 1: I'm trying to take this on in a very practical,

500
00:27:22,396 --> 00:27:24,836
Speaker 1: serious way, like to not just be throwing the word

501
00:27:24,836 --> 00:27:27,956
Speaker 1: concentration camp around in some willy nilly fashion. When you

502
00:27:28,036 --> 00:27:31,636
Speaker 1: are dealing with surges at the border, when you are

503
00:27:32,556 --> 00:27:35,916
Speaker 1: looking at some of the situations that have arisen historically,

504
00:27:36,236 --> 00:27:40,476
Speaker 1: it might be almost impossible to deal with them without

505
00:27:41,356 --> 00:27:45,836
Speaker 1: having people housed somewhere for some period of hours or days. Literally.

506
00:27:46,356 --> 00:27:50,756
Speaker 1: Having any immigration system is probably predicated on having people

507
00:27:50,796 --> 00:27:53,756
Speaker 1: in a place for some period of time. But the

508
00:27:54,396 --> 00:27:59,076
Speaker 1: crossing over of that is that the detention becomes the point.

509
00:27:59,636 --> 00:28:02,276
Speaker 1: I mean, even people coming into Ellis Island would have

510
00:28:02,316 --> 00:28:05,956
Speaker 1: to wait sometimes for processing if they family members certainly did. Yeah, yeah,

511
00:28:06,036 --> 00:28:07,916
Speaker 1: so I mean, so I want to be clear that

512
00:28:07,956 --> 00:28:10,356
Speaker 1: it isn't just like who's presenting which facts. It is

513
00:28:10,396 --> 00:28:14,756
Speaker 1: literally immigration is a process that often would require holding

514
00:28:14,796 --> 00:28:17,796
Speaker 1: people while their process for some period of days or

515
00:28:17,836 --> 00:28:20,956
Speaker 1: some you know, some small manageable period when the goal

516
00:28:21,076 --> 00:28:25,316
Speaker 1: is clearly to move them through that process. But wouldn't

517
00:28:25,396 --> 00:28:28,036
Speaker 1: wouldn't the Trump administrations say the point is not to detain.

518
00:28:28,156 --> 00:28:31,196
Speaker 1: We would much prefer to send all of the people

519
00:28:31,716 --> 00:28:34,756
Speaker 1: in these facilities back where they came from. That's the

520
00:28:34,796 --> 00:28:39,756
Speaker 1: administration's stated goal, but they would say, because of international

521
00:28:39,756 --> 00:28:43,436
Speaker 1: and US law that requires processing and requires in some

522
00:28:43,556 --> 00:28:46,276
Speaker 1: circumstances a hearing if someone makes a claim to asylum,

523
00:28:46,716 --> 00:28:51,236
Speaker 1: we're therefore stuck with these detention centers. So you say

524
00:28:51,316 --> 00:28:53,636
Speaker 1: the point is detention, and they would say the point

525
00:28:53,716 --> 00:28:56,156
Speaker 1: is not detention. We would rather not detain anybody, but

526
00:28:56,356 --> 00:28:59,636
Speaker 1: it's the legal system that's requiring us too. The thing

527
00:28:59,716 --> 00:29:02,516
Speaker 1: about that is that everything that has happened since twenty

528
00:29:02,556 --> 00:29:07,556
Speaker 1: fifteen has pointed the meaning of what they're doing not

529
00:29:07,756 --> 00:29:12,276
Speaker 1: to things that solve practice coal matters, but to punitive measures.

530
00:29:12,276 --> 00:29:16,036
Speaker 1: We had John Kelly talking months before the family separation

531
00:29:16,076 --> 00:29:18,116
Speaker 1: policy was put in place that they might do it

532
00:29:18,196 --> 00:29:20,996
Speaker 1: as a deterrence. Something that is a deterrence is a

533
00:29:21,036 --> 00:29:23,836
Speaker 1: punitive approach to keep people, to make it have a

534
00:29:23,956 --> 00:29:28,076
Speaker 1: cost to do something. In addition, when those policies that

535
00:29:28,116 --> 00:29:30,156
Speaker 1: were first paid attention to last year, in the first

536
00:29:30,196 --> 00:29:31,836
Speaker 1: half of last year, that kind of culminated in the

537
00:29:31,836 --> 00:29:35,596
Speaker 1: family separation policy a little over a year ago, there

538
00:29:35,716 --> 00:29:38,956
Speaker 1: was not the surge that we are having now. That is,

539
00:29:38,956 --> 00:29:41,636
Speaker 1: in part a byproduct these things were done in advance

540
00:29:41,796 --> 00:29:45,036
Speaker 1: of the larger numbers coming. You did not see the

541
00:29:45,716 --> 00:29:47,956
Speaker 1: big waves that we've been having in recent months that

542
00:29:48,036 --> 00:29:50,916
Speaker 1: some people are attributing to Trump's discussions of closing the

543
00:29:50,916 --> 00:29:53,356
Speaker 1: border in this fear that they may not be able

544
00:29:53,396 --> 00:29:55,556
Speaker 1: to get in if they don't get in now. And

545
00:29:55,636 --> 00:29:58,356
Speaker 1: so I think it's disingenuous to say we're doing this

546
00:29:58,436 --> 00:30:02,196
Speaker 1: because of the numbers. But I want to be honest

547
00:30:02,196 --> 00:30:05,596
Speaker 1: and fair that a mass immigration system, you're going to

548
00:30:05,716 --> 00:30:10,316
Speaker 1: have to have people housed somewhere, And difference between that

549
00:30:10,676 --> 00:30:14,116
Speaker 1: and a concentration camp is in part, how long are

550
00:30:14,116 --> 00:30:16,236
Speaker 1: you holding them? Is it indefinite? Is there a plan

551
00:30:16,476 --> 00:30:18,676
Speaker 1: will they be released? And do they know when they

552
00:30:18,716 --> 00:30:21,476
Speaker 1: will be released? And is there a punitive aspect to it?

553
00:30:21,476 --> 00:30:24,756
Speaker 1: And if detention, if mass detention is the point of

554
00:30:24,796 --> 00:30:29,596
Speaker 1: the thing, which it is here because the Trump administration

555
00:30:29,676 --> 00:30:32,716
Speaker 1: has been detaining all kinds of people that these children

556
00:30:32,996 --> 00:30:36,316
Speaker 1: that it could release, that have relatives in the US

557
00:30:36,316 --> 00:30:38,396
Speaker 1: that are waiting to deal with them. If it were

558
00:30:38,396 --> 00:30:40,716
Speaker 1: a priority, if they wanted to make it happen, they

559
00:30:40,756 --> 00:30:43,276
Speaker 1: would not need to be doing this. There's I believe

560
00:30:43,356 --> 00:30:46,796
Speaker 1: that there is a very public detention centered aspect in

561
00:30:46,836 --> 00:30:51,796
Speaker 1: which they're trying to focus that, but also the idea

562
00:30:51,836 --> 00:30:53,756
Speaker 1: that you could just leave, which a lot of people say.

563
00:30:54,036 --> 00:30:55,996
Speaker 1: I have talked to border reporters who have said no.

564
00:30:56,076 --> 00:30:57,516
Speaker 1: Some people have said, oh my god, don't take my

565
00:30:57,596 --> 00:30:59,956
Speaker 1: child from me. We will leave, and it's too late.

566
00:31:00,036 --> 00:31:03,116
Speaker 1: They can't do it. So this idea that they are

567
00:31:03,156 --> 00:31:06,796
Speaker 1: just allowed to go is not true. It's not accurate. Andrea,

568
00:31:06,836 --> 00:31:10,116
Speaker 1: I just want to close with a different angle of

569
00:31:10,316 --> 00:31:12,836
Speaker 1: critique that comes not from people who say that the

570
00:31:12,836 --> 00:31:16,036
Speaker 1: trumpa Indmistration doesn't intend to create concentration camps, but who say,

571
00:31:16,476 --> 00:31:19,436
Speaker 1: we share your sense that this is a terrible moral wrong,

572
00:31:20,116 --> 00:31:23,476
Speaker 1: but we believe that the term concentration camp, notwithstanding the

573
00:31:23,516 --> 00:31:27,676
Speaker 1: history that you've uncovered, has such a close tie to

574
00:31:27,716 --> 00:31:31,476
Speaker 1: the horrors of the Holocaust, and arguably, some would say

575
00:31:31,516 --> 00:31:34,916
Speaker 1: to the unique circumstances of the Holocaust, the association of

576
00:31:34,956 --> 00:31:38,476
Speaker 1: the concentration camps with death camps, that therefore we shouldn't

577
00:31:38,556 --> 00:31:41,876
Speaker 1: use the terminology, not because we should be careful about

578
00:31:41,996 --> 00:31:44,196
Speaker 1: using that to condemn the United States, but rather because

579
00:31:44,196 --> 00:31:48,836
Speaker 1: we should be protecting the unique legacy of circumstances of

580
00:31:48,876 --> 00:31:55,196
Speaker 1: historical historical memory. What's your thought on that line. I

581
00:31:55,236 --> 00:32:00,716
Speaker 1: think if people out of respect for memorializing the millions murdered,

582
00:32:00,796 --> 00:32:05,036
Speaker 1: really unparalleled thing in history, you know, in the camps

583
00:32:05,036 --> 00:32:07,036
Speaker 1: of the Holocaust. If they want to not use that

584
00:32:07,196 --> 00:32:12,316
Speaker 1: term themselves, understand that impulse, and I respect that, But

585
00:32:13,036 --> 00:32:18,956
Speaker 1: for myself, there is forty years of history of things

586
00:32:19,076 --> 00:32:22,476
Speaker 1: called concentration camps that the world has largely forgotten that

587
00:32:22,516 --> 00:32:27,276
Speaker 1: are how we got to the Holocaust. And to not

588
00:32:27,636 --> 00:32:32,476
Speaker 1: realize that the Holocaust was made possible by these earlier

589
00:32:32,516 --> 00:32:36,316
Speaker 1: camps that were concentration camps that we are repeating the

590
00:32:36,396 --> 00:32:41,236
Speaker 1: history of today. I think by not naming that erases

591
00:32:41,276 --> 00:32:43,556
Speaker 1: that history in a way that makes the Holocaust seem

592
00:32:43,596 --> 00:32:45,996
Speaker 1: as if it happened from nowhere, which is a really

593
00:32:46,116 --> 00:32:51,796
Speaker 1: dangerous historical idea. But also knowing that we are repeating

594
00:32:51,796 --> 00:32:55,076
Speaker 1: that history and calling these concentration camps tells us something

595
00:32:55,276 --> 00:32:57,596
Speaker 1: about what is going to happen next, because we have

596
00:32:57,596 --> 00:32:59,996
Speaker 1: a lot of case studies from those early camps and

597
00:33:00,036 --> 00:33:02,836
Speaker 1: we can have a pretty good idea of where things

598
00:33:02,836 --> 00:33:05,996
Speaker 1: will go. And by not calling them that, I think

599
00:33:06,036 --> 00:33:09,516
Speaker 1: we'd look away from the likelihood of what is going

600
00:33:09,556 --> 00:33:13,076
Speaker 1: to happen next. In what we're doing today. Andrea, thank

601
00:33:13,116 --> 00:33:15,596
Speaker 1: you for that very thoughtful and I think, in many

602
00:33:15,596 --> 00:33:19,956
Speaker 1: ways powerful response to that concern, and thank you for

603
00:33:20,276 --> 00:33:25,036
Speaker 1: your historical work in clarifying the very complex history of

604
00:33:25,076 --> 00:33:28,116
Speaker 1: concentration camps. I think we're much better off for understanding

605
00:33:28,116 --> 00:33:30,676
Speaker 1: and gathering what that history shows. Well, thank you for

606
00:33:30,716 --> 00:33:39,716
Speaker 1: the chance to talk. Listening to Andrea, I was gripped

607
00:33:39,756 --> 00:33:44,036
Speaker 1: by two strongly competing impulses. On the one hand, as

608
00:33:44,076 --> 00:33:47,276
Speaker 1: I understood more deeply the history of the concentration camp

609
00:33:47,316 --> 00:33:50,436
Speaker 1: itself and where it came from, I was really struck

610
00:33:50,476 --> 00:33:54,316
Speaker 1: by the ways that any massed attention of civilians can

611
00:33:54,476 --> 00:33:58,876
Speaker 1: credibly be considered a concentration camp. Andrea is right when

612
00:33:58,916 --> 00:34:01,196
Speaker 1: she says that without an understanding of that history, we

613
00:34:01,236 --> 00:34:03,836
Speaker 1: can't understand where the Nazi camps came from, and that

614
00:34:03,876 --> 00:34:06,156
Speaker 1: it's very important to keep that history in mind as

615
00:34:06,196 --> 00:34:09,796
Speaker 1: we remember that many concentration camps are not death camps,

616
00:34:09,996 --> 00:34:13,596
Speaker 1: but our camps started, albeit for political reasons, by any

617
00:34:13,636 --> 00:34:16,076
Speaker 1: government that's trying to detain large numbers of people in

618
00:34:16,196 --> 00:34:19,236
Speaker 1: order to protect itself. On the other hand, I was

619
00:34:19,316 --> 00:34:23,876
Speaker 1: also powerfully influenced by the consistent feeling that most concentration

620
00:34:23,956 --> 00:34:27,716
Speaker 1: camps throughout history have been designed to have some transformational

621
00:34:27,716 --> 00:34:31,196
Speaker 1: effect on a piece of territory, that they're designed to

622
00:34:31,276 --> 00:34:33,716
Speaker 1: move people off of one piece of land to take

623
00:34:33,756 --> 00:34:36,636
Speaker 1: over some piece of land. And that's not really the

624
00:34:36,716 --> 00:34:39,876
Speaker 1: case for the migrant internment camps and facilities that the

625
00:34:39,916 --> 00:34:43,116
Speaker 1: United States has been creating, because after all, the goal

626
00:34:43,156 --> 00:34:45,596
Speaker 1: of those camps is, even if one has the most

627
00:34:45,596 --> 00:34:48,996
Speaker 1: critical view, to move people out of the United States

628
00:34:49,996 --> 00:34:52,356
Speaker 1: ultimately going forward, what we need to do when we

629
00:34:52,436 --> 00:34:56,196
Speaker 1: look at and understand the conditions, often the terrible conditions

630
00:34:56,396 --> 00:35:00,276
Speaker 1: in these facilities, is to make sure, as a democracy

631
00:35:00,476 --> 00:35:03,796
Speaker 1: that believes in human rights, that nobody is being detained

632
00:35:03,796 --> 00:35:07,396
Speaker 1: in those facilities for punitive reasons, and that the conditions

633
00:35:07,396 --> 00:35:10,996
Speaker 1: in those facilities don't even begin in to approach the

634
00:35:11,116 --> 00:35:14,316
Speaker 1: terrible conditions that have been present in concentration camps over

635
00:35:14,356 --> 00:35:17,596
Speaker 1: the last century. The more we do to communicate that,

636
00:35:17,956 --> 00:35:22,036
Speaker 1: the less likely history is to attach the terrible term

637
00:35:22,076 --> 00:35:28,756
Speaker 1: of concentration camp to these facilities. Deep Background is brought

638
00:35:28,796 --> 00:35:31,996
Speaker 1: to you by Pushkin Industries. Our producer is Lydia Geancott,

639
00:35:32,076 --> 00:35:36,076
Speaker 1: with engineering by Jason Gambrell and Jason Rostkowski. Our showrunner

640
00:35:36,116 --> 00:35:38,916
Speaker 1: is Sophie mckibbon. Our theme music is composed by Luis

641
00:35:38,956 --> 00:35:42,796
Speaker 1: GERA special thanks to the Pushkin Brass, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob

642
00:35:42,796 --> 00:35:45,996
Speaker 1: Weisberg and Mia Lobel. I'm Noah Feldman. You can follow

643
00:35:45,996 --> 00:35:49,116
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Noah R Feldman. This is deep

644
00:35:49,156 --> 00:35:49,716
Speaker 1: background