JADE Student Edition 2019 JADE JSLUG 2019 | Seite 104

on her views of the effect of the poor diet when she
writes “to keep these camps going is to murder the
children”. Ironically, one of the reasons that rations
were so poor was the interrupted supply lines due to
Boer insurgent railway and bridge attacks.
Malnutrition facilitated outbreaks of disease within
these camps. Outbreaks of typhoid, dysentery,
and measles were the most rampant, and were
exacerbated by a lack of clean drinking water, the
overcrowding of camps, and poor hygiene facilities.
Within these camps existed a perfect combination
of circumstances in which disease would thrive, and
ultimately take the lives of around 22,000 women
and children (Mendes, 2019). Although, records of
the exact casualties were not kept meticulously, and
estimates range from 20,000 to 28,000 depending
on source. It is important to be aware that none
of the casualty estimates correspond with Grace
Blakely’s statement of “hundreds of thousands of
people died” on the recent episode of Question Time.
Similarly, the most contentious statement, made
seconds afterwards, that “it was systematic murder”
is incorrect. The interned people within these camps
died as a result of malnutrition and disease, and while
this can be blamed on the neglect of British forces
operating the camp, it cannot be labelled reasonably
as “systematic murder”.
The death rates
The Boer concentration camps were never meant
to be places of death. Inside the camps there was
no apparatus of murder akin to the gas chambers of
the Nazi extermination camps, no systemic torture
inflicted on those interned within the camps, no
prisoner uniforms or shaved heads. The fact that
there were no prisoner uniforms demonstrates a great
deal about the function of the camp, internees were
not dehumanised through the process of making
all prisoners resemble one another, a tactic used in
the Nazi camps to break spirit. Additionally, interned
Boer families were allowed to keep the money and
personal possessions they had brought with them
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from their farms before being interned (Hobhouse,
1901). Fundamentally, the Boer concentration camps
were different from the death camps of the Third
Reich. Examination of the casualty rates within the
camps show that around 24% of all Boers interned
in the camps died (Sentrum, 2007). This is dwarfed
by the 84.6% death rate of Auschwitz and serves
to demonstrate that the two were incomparably
different in terms of purpose (Długoborski, 2000).
That does not even factor in scale, over the course
of the war around 22,000 Boers died as a result
of disease and malnutrition, in Auschwitz alone
that number is 1.1 million. Even lesser-known
Nazi extermination camps dwarf this number, with
Treblinka totalling over 800,000, and Belzec around
500,000 (United States Holocaust Museum, 2019).
The death of 20,000 Boer civilians because of British
negligence is abhorrent, but it cannot be reasonably
compared to the deaths overseen in the camps of the
Nazi regime.
While conditions in the Boer camps were inadequate,
they are undoubtably better than the living conditions
of the Nazi death camps. Though the Nazi camps
administered death primarily through gas chambers
or forced labour, the food rations and sanitation
conditions were even poorer than that of the Boer
camps. In addition to typhoid outbreaks, prisoners in
Nazi camps were often subject to scabies, gangrene,
tuberculosis, malaria, meningitis, and pemphigus
(Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau, 2018).
These outbreaks were brought about by inadequate
sanitation, meagre food rations, and thin prisoner
uniforms in colder months. What is abhorrent is
that in many cases the Nazi camp operators had the
capability to provide much better living conditions to
the camp prisoners, but instead chose to withhold
thicker clothes and higher rations with the knowledge
that by doing so they were increasing the death rate
of the camps (Wachsmann, 2015). Inside the British-
run concentration camps, death and disease were a
result of neglect and overcrowding, but the problems
were not knowingly orchestrated with the intention
to cause further mortality among those interned.
Another difference between the camps operated by
the Nazi regime and those operated by the British