Madam, Tim O'Sullivan (January 31st) is somewhat disingenuous in absolving the Nazis of inventing concentration camps. While it may well be true that the Spanish in Cuba in the 1890s concentrated loyalists in "camps of reconcentration", and the British did likewise to civilians suspected of aiding guerilla fighters during the Boer War, the horrific death rates were due, as he acknowledges, "to poor diet and disease", not deliberate mass murder.
It is the industrialised killing of civilians in camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka that people have in mind when they refer to "concentration camps" and these were a uniquely Nazi "contribution" to civilization. Perhaps we should stop calling them "concentration camps" and use, instead, the term "extermination camps", which is much more appropriate. - Yours, etc,
MARTIN D. STERN, Salford, England.
Madam, - Tim O'Sullivan (January 30th) writes that "being Irish, I am at ease accepting the concentration camp as a British invention".
I hate to disturb his tranquillity but, as his own letter shows, concentration camps were in fact an Irish invention since Lord Kitchener, the author of this policy during the Boer War, was born in Ballylongford, Co Kerry. - Yours, etc,
Prof GEOFFREY ROBERTS, Department of History, University College Cork.