Were the Nazi concentration camps worse than the Gulag ones?

Comments ( 4 )

1. Percy says

   I don't know – never been out to the Gulag.

   I suggest you ask Father Wiggly, or whomever he purports to be. He claims to be an expert on these things.

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2. sdvwallingford says

   Not all Nazi concentration camps were death camps, so it is difficult to compare. Both institutions were horrible. There were Gulag facilities that were just pits in the middle of the woods where people were shot in the back of the head and buried, there were Gulag facilities that were entire industrial cities built by the inmates in the middle of the Arctic tundra (many of them exist as industrial cities today).

   There were industrial Gulags where survival of internment was considered proof that you had stolen from the government (the work / food matrix was designed to kill an average person after a certain number of years) and you could be punished with an extended confinement or you could even be executed. Gulags were made even worse in the fact that there were not enough guards to keep everything moving, so often the worst and most violent of criminals were put in positions of authority because they would not shrink from beating and torturing people who did not do a full day's work.

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3. aida says

   To the best of my knowledge, the Gulags weren't extermination camps, as so many of the Nazi ones were. Surely that fact makes the Nazi ones worse.

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4. thgurkha says

   The purpose of the Nazi camps was to contain and liquidate persons who were undesirable to the government.

   The gulags were harsh prisons to contain political enemies, true or suspected, of the communist regime but not necessarily to kill them.

   Which was worse is something that only the survivors can tell.

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