Which nation was the first to invent concentration camps? Detailed answer

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Which nation was the first to invent concentration camps? Detailed answer

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Which nation was the first to invent concentration camps?

If you still think this is Germany, then you live in the stone age.

The usual answer to this question is "Britain", referring to the internment camps for families set up by the British during the Second Boer War of 1899-1902.

In fact, the authorship of the idea belongs to the Spaniards. The first similarity of concentration camps appeared in 1895 in Cuba: during the war to preserve their colony, the Spanish authorities had the idea to "concentrate" the local population in one place, so that it would be easier to control them. The war in Cuba ended in defeat for Spain, and in 1898 she had to withdraw troops from the island. The United States immediately jumped into the resulting vacuum, establishing now American military influence in Cuba - until the Castro revolution in 1959.

The Spanish idea of reconcentration was taken up by the British, who faced a similar situation in South Africa. The camps became a necessity because of the British policy of burning Boer farms to the ground. As a result, a huge number of refugees have accumulated in the country. Then the British decided to collect all the women and children abandoned by the Boer detachments in special camps in order to deprive them of the opportunity to replenish the enemy's supplies.

In total, forty-five covered camps were organized for Boer women and children, and forty-six for black African laborers and their families.

Despite humane intentions, living conditions in the camps worsened every day. Food was scarce and disease spread rapidly. By 1902, 28 Boers (of whom 000 were children) and 22 Africans had died in the camps—twice as many as the soldiers who died in battle.

Shortly thereafter, during attempts to colonize South-West Africa (now Namibia), the Germans created their first concentration camps.

Men, women and children from the local tribes - Herero and Nama - were arrested, thrown into prisons, forced to work in camps. Between 1904 and 1907, 100 Africans died of violence and starvation - 000% of all Herero and 80% of Nama.

In 1985, the UN recognized the attempted extermination of the indigenous inhabitants of Namibia as the first act of genocide in the XNUMXth century.

Author: John Lloyd, John Mitchinson

Random interesting fact from the Great Encyclopedia:

What is pop art?

This is a direction in the visual arts that arose in England in the late 50s and early 60s of the XX century, and then spread to America as a counterbalance to abstract art.

Pop art seeks to give value in public opinion to simple, daily observed things and phenomena - comics, commercials, billboards (street advertising billboards), etc.

Andy Warhol (1928-1987) belongs to the most famous figures of pop art.

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The stability of DNA is the key to a long and happy life, so the cell tries to eliminate all mutations with the help of special molecular machines. Of course, here we can recall the phenomenon of crossing over, which occurs, for example, during the maturation of germ cells (and in dividing cells in general) - during crossing over, a large-scale exchange of DNA fragments occurs between homologous chromosomes.

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All the more surprising are the results of Hongjun Song's research group at Johns Hopkins University. He and his collaborators found that normal, mature brain neurons are constantly making changes to their own DNA using epigenetic marks. As you know, in order to change the activity of a particular gene, the cell does not need to interfere with the nucleotide sequence, it is enough to supply the gene with special markers that will make it less attractive to proteins synthesizing RNA. These markers are methyl groups that are attached to the nitrogenous base of cytosine, one of the four "letters" of the genetic code. (In parentheses, just in case, we note that methyl marks and epigenetic regulation in general are far from the only way to control gene activity.)

DNA methylation is easy, but it happens that the label needs to be removed from cytosine. This is no longer so easy to do, and here a whole chain of reactions is launched, and along the way, the labeled "letter" is cut out and ordinary, unmethylated cytosine is inserted in its place. That is, a hole is formed in one of the DNA chains, which is a strong element of instability - after all, some other “letter” can mistakenly get here, and we will get a real mutation. Nevertheless, the processes of DNA methylation and demethylation are quite active in mammalian cells, even in such a “delicate” organ as the brain, which is generally protected to the maximum from an unpredictable external environment and from the rest of the body.

In their article in Nature Neuroscience, the authors write that in mouse brain neurons, demethylation activity was clearly associated with synaptic cell plasticity. Synaptic plasticity is understood as the ability of a neuron to regulate the strength of the interneuronal connection with its neighbors - thanks to it, the impulse in the chain can weaken or increase. At the molecular level, this can be seen by how the number of neurotransmitters that transmit a signal from one neuron to another changes, and how the number of neurotransmitter receptors at the "receiving side" changes - the wider the range of changes, the greater the plasticity of the neuron. So, when the Tet3 gene, which suppresses demethylation, was turned off in brain cells, synaptic plasticity increased; conversely, when Tet3 activity was stimulated, plasticity decreased.

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Synaptic plasticity is associated with the ability to learn - it is believed that the more it is, the better for the brain. But it obviously must have some kind of regulators, one of which unexpectedly turned out to be the Tet3 gene, which reacts to changes in the activity of interneuronal contacts. Of course, the question arises of how exactly this "microsurgery" of DNA, that is, the constant cutting out of letters from a sequence of nucleotides, affects the ability of synapses to respond to different signals. It is possible that the gaps in the DNA chains fall precisely on those genes that directly affect the strength and sensitivity of synapses, but what exactly happens there can only be known from further research.

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