History Main / POWCamp

* In the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series' backstory, an [[OppressiveStatesOfAmerica increasingly-fascist]] United States of America erected a great many of these during its final war with China, to contain Chinese-Americans suspected of being foreign agents. You can visit a few of them in the games: Turtledove Detainment Camp in ''VideoGame/Fallout3''[='s=] "Point Lookout" expansion is located in a miserable swamp that was simultaneously used as a prison and toxic dumping site, while in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas: Old World Blues'', the Bit Empty's "Little Yangtze" internment camp supplied human subjects for the research center's twisted experiments. These camps are still populated, 200 years later, by prisoners [[OurGhoulsAreDifferent ghoulified]] by the nuclear war.

* In ''Series/NeverHaveIEver'', half-Japanese Paxton's ''Oji-san'' (Grandpa) was interned in the Japanese-American concentration camp in Manzanar, California, per [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9066 Executive Order 9066]]. Paxton reads his Oji-san's diary of this experience, and gets the idea to share this in the Facing History class.

* ''The Colditz Story'', from 1955, is about British, Dutch, French and Polish officers in the infamous Colditz Castle Camp. The stroy is not centered around one escape attempt, but ''several'', reflecting the many schemes which were hatched in the real-life Colditz Camp.

* ''The Wooden Horse'', made in 1950, probably the UrExample of the British [=PoW=] Movie.

* The end of ''The Hiding Place'' was set in a concentration camp.

* ''Literature/Mask2020'': It's revealed in the beginning of the book that Akiko's family was moved to a U.S. Internment Camp along with the rest of America's Japanese-American population due to [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_9066 Executive Order 9066]] being in effect at the time.

* ''Film/TheGreatEscape'' has a video game version for the PlayStation 2.

During major wars, armies will often capture numerous enemy soldiers. These enemies must be kept somewhere, preferably some place where they can not return to their fellows. This usually results in a Prisoner of War Camp. As soldiers on the battlefield, these two groups are enemies. For whatever reason, a group of soldiers has been captured by the very guys they were trying to kill just the day before. The camp guards will not like the prisoners because those same prisoners may have been responsible for the death and destruction visited upon their homeland. Typically, the guards will not be nice about the way they treat their prisoners.[[note]]This can vary from country to country: during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, POW camps in Allied countries that were not directly attacked in their own territory, especially USA and Canada, were usually compliant with the Geneva Conventions and were surprisingly hospitable to the Axis soldiers to the point where they were often considered them more comfortable than their own side's barracks. This had the benefits of prisoners less likely to cause trouble or escape and more willing to talk to interrogators and to cooperate supplementing labor needs like on local farms. Furthermore, those prisoners were allowed to write home through the International Red Cross organisation and they often mentioned how well they are doing as prisoners, which encouraged more Axis soldiers to surrender to Allied forces.[[/note]]

Since governments don't like having large numbers of 'potential enemies' running around loose in their back yard, something must be done about them. The answer to this problem is an internment camp. It's basically a [=PoW=] camp for civilians. Since they are almost always run by the military, we can consider them to be closely related, and therefore included. The concentration camp[[labelnote:*]]Strictly speaking, a concentration camp is just an internment or [=PoW=] camp with a very high population density, and is not necessarily any worse than either. Camps with the express purpose of murdering the inmates are more correctly termed "death camps". However the two terms have become largely interchangeable after Nazi Germany tried to hide the truth about their death camps by calling them "concentration camps". The concentration camps Nazi Germany operated before WWII were not made for and did not employ mass killings, though they still used harsh labour for the sole purpose of torturing the prisoners. British concentration camps operated during the Second Boer War were not death camps either, but concentrating lots of people and then neglecting their sanitation led to a horrific death toll.[[/labelnote]] is the evil twin to the internment camp. Its main objective is to contain political prisoners for either extermination or to keep them handily available for slave labor. While detainees at an internment camp are generally not mistreated, detainees at a concentration camp can expect nothing but constant pain and hunger or instant death at any moment. Any way you look at it, you don't want to be a resident of any of these. Unless you're a guard.

During major wars, armies will often capture numerous enemy soldiers. These enemies must be kept somewhere, preferably some place where they can not return to their fellows. This usually results in a Prisoner of War Camp. As soldiers on the battlefield, these two groups are enemies. For whatever reason, a group of soldiers has been captured by the very guys they were trying to kill just the day before. The camp guards will not like the prisoners because those same prisoners may have been responsible for the death and destruction visited upon their homeland. Typically, the guards will not be nice about the way they treat their prisoners.[[note]]This can vary from country to country: during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, POW camps in Allied countries that were not directly attacked in their own territory, especially USA and Canada, were usually compliant with the Geneva Conventions and were surprisingly hospitable to the Axis soldiers to the point where they were often considered them more comfortable than their own side's barracks. This had the benefits of prisoners less likely to cause trouble or escape and more willing to talk to interrogator and cooperate supplementing labor needs like on local farms. Furthermore, those prisoners were allowed to write home through the International Red Cross organisation and they often mentioned how well they are doing as prisoners, which encouraged more Axis soldiers to surrender to Allied forces.[[/note]]

During major wars, armies will often capture numerous enemy soldiers. These enemies must be kept somewhere, preferably some place where they can not return to their fellows. This usually results in a Prisoner of War Camp. As soldiers on the battlefield, these two groups are enemies. For whatever reason, a group of soldiers has been captured by the very guys they were trying to kill just the day before. The camp guards will not like the prisoners because those same prisoners may have been responsible for the death and destruction visited upon their homeland. Typically, the guards will not be nice about the way they treat their prisoners.

* The beta plot of Creator/TomClancy's ''[[Literature/JackRyan Without Remorse]]'' is about a group of American prisoners in a secret [=PoW=] camp in North Vietnam during UsefulNotes/TheVietnamWar, and an attempt to rescue them. The prisoners are kept in isolation from each other; however, they are not tortured, because the GRU (Russian military intelligence) officer there believes that the best way to get information from them is to get the prisoners to let down their guard by treating the prisoners well and acting friendly.

** In the ''ComicBook/XWingSeries'', [[BigBad Ysanne Isard's]] prison Lusankya is part this, part prison for political dissidents, and part ManchurianAgent factory.

* ''VideoGame/ValkyriaChroinicles'' has a mission to liberate a concentration camp of [[FantasticRacism Darcsens]].

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* The 1996 TV Movie ''Andersonville'', directed by John Frankenheimer, tells the story of the notorious Confederate prison camp.

* ''Series/HogansHeroes'' Comic misadventures of prisoners trying to disrupt the German war effort from right under their noses.

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* ''Literature/TheBoyInTheStripedPyjamas'' is a heavily fictionalised (and probably inaccurate) child's eye view of Auschwitz with a terrible twist ending.

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[[folder:{{Music}}]]
* Music/{{Rush}}: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ivnvKIu4mg "Red Sector A"]] seems to be a concentration camp run by non-humans. WordOfGod indicates that the nameless camp depicted is based on real concentration camps with the SerialNumbersFiledOff, staffed by ordinary humans who surrendered their humanity to be part of a totalitarian state.

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* ''Allegience'', a stage musical starring Creator/GeorgeTakei, is about Japanese-Americans who were forced to live in Internment Camps during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.
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[[folder:VideoGame]]

* In the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series' backstory, an [[OppressiveStatesOfAmerica increasingly-fascist]] United States of America erected a great many of these during its final war with China, to contain Chinese-Americans suspected of being foreign agents. You can visit a few of them in the games: Turtledove Detainment Camp in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'''s ''Point Lookout'' expansion is located in a miserable swamp that was simultaneously used as a prison and toxic dumping site, while in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas: Old World Blues'', the Bit Empty's "Little Yangtze" internment camp supplied human subjects for the research center's twisted experiments. These camps are still populated, 200 years later, by prisoners [[OurGhoulsAreDifferent ghoulified]] by the nuclear war.

[[quoteright:300:[[Film/{{Stalag17}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/StalagSeventeen_6303.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:300: You ''REALLY'' don't want to stay at this camp.]]

!!Works Featuring the [=PoW=] Camp:
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* Music/{{Rush}}: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ivnvKIu4mg "Red Sector A"]] seems to be a concentration camp run by non-humans.

* ''VideoGame/DetroitBecomeHuman'' has a chapter that involves [[spoiler:Kara]] being sent to the Android version of one of these.

* The human ranches in ''[[VideoGame/TalesOfSymphonia Tales of Symphonia]]'' are basically concentration camps by another name.

* Nimdok's scenario in ''VideoGame/IHaveNoMouthAndIMustScream'' is set in a concentration camp (specifically Auschwitz), although any explicit references to the Nazis and the Jews are obfuscated by AM until the very end of the scenario.

* ''VideoGame/DetroitBecomeHuman'' has a chapter that involves [[spoiler:Kara]] being sent to the Android version of one of these.
* In the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series' backstory, an [[OppressiveStatesOfAmerica increasingly-fascist]] United States of America erected a great many of these during its final war with China, to contain Chinese-Americans suspected of being foreign agents. You can visit a few of them in the games: Turtledove Detainment Camp in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'''s ''Point Lookout'' expansion is located in a miserable swamp that was simultaneously used as a prison and toxic dumping site, while in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas: Old World Blues'', the Bit Empty's "Little Yangtze" internment camp supplied human subjects for the research center's twisted experiments. These camps are still populated, 200 years later, by prisoners [[OurGhoulsAreDifferent ghoulified]] by the nuclear war.

* In the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series' backstory, an [[OppressiveStatesOfAmerica increasingly-fascist]] United States of America erected a great many of these during its final war with China, to contain Chinese-Americans suspected of being foreign agents. You can visit a few of them in the games: Turtledove Detainment Camp in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'''s ''Point Lookout'' expansion is located in a miserable swamp that was simultaneously used as a prison and toxic dumping site, while in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas: Old World Blues'', the Bit Empty's "Little Yangtze" internment camp supplied human subjects for the research center's twisted experiments. These camps are still populated, 200 years later, by prisoners [[OurGhoulsAreDifferent ghoulified]] by the nuclear war.