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The New York Times posted an opinion piece this weekend saying that what we're doing on the border isn't concentration camps, but is more like Vichy internment. I have some concerns about this essay. nytimes.com/2019/06/29/opi…
The essay includes some great information about French camps under the Vichy regime, but is missing the larger history of concentration camps. Civilian internment IS part of concentration camp history. We can't get to the most lethal camp systems without going through such camps.
My concern here is with the Times' coverage. Through 1941, the Times reported these very French camps, first set up for Spanish refugees and later used for German Jews fleeing the Nazis, were concentration camps. They used that term. 
I pitched an opinion piece to the NYT in 2015 saying we were rife for the return of concentration camps on US soil. I was told this seemed unlikely. I have spoken this month with two Times reporters about the current camps. Neither has published a word.
An editor from the NYT Magazine recently invited me to submit a pitch on concentration camp history and the US border camps. I was told that the idea was shot down in their weekly meeting.
It's fine if the Times doesn't want to use material from me. But by avoiding this history--its own history--when it comes to covering concentration camps, the Times is doing a disservice to its readers and the country. We're revisiting the "enhanced interrogation"/torture debacle
I went to France & visited places like Gurs & Drancy. People were locked up for no good reason in these camps. They got sick in these camps. They died in these camps. Some were deported to Auschwitz from these camps. They were not death camps. But they were concentration camps.
And please, everyone, don't go harassing the author of that essay. That's not the point I'm trying to make. I'm hoping the Times will take a serious look at the history we're repeating.
