Concentration camps divide into three types matching afterlife conceptions

Evidence

This atmosphere of madness and unreality, created by an apparent lack of purpose, is the real iron curtain which hides all forms of concentration camps from the eyes of the world. Seen from outside, they and the things that happen in them can be described only in images drawn from a life after death, that is, a life removed from earthly purposes. Concentration camps can very aptly be divided into three types corresponding to three basic Western conceptions of a life after death: Hades, Purgatory, and Hell. To Hades correspond those relatively mild forms, once popular even in non-totalitarian countries, for getting undesirable elements of all sorts—refugees, stateless persons, the asocial and the unemployed—out of the way; as DP camps, which are nothing other than camps for persons who have become superfluous and bothersome, they have survived the war. Purgatory is represented by the Soviet Union’s labor camps, where neglect is combined with chaotic forced labor. Hell in the most literal sense was embodied by those types of camp perfected by the Nazis, in which the whole of life was thoroughly and systematically organized with a view to the greatest possible torment. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 996

Categorization

• DEFINE: Arendt introduces a typological framework — Hades, Purgatory, Hell — for classifying camps, a transferable conceptual schema for the field.
• XREF: The ‘superfluous and bothersome’ population concept connects directly to the statelessness and superfluousness themes the reader is tracking across this book and into the Islamophobia readings.