The German term for "concentration camp" is "Konzentrationslager", often abbreviated as "KZ". It was officially used by the Nazi regime to refer to internment and labor camps where various groups of people such as Jews, political dissidents, Romani people, prisoners of war, and others were detained, imprisoned, forced to work, abused, and systematically murdered during World War II. While concentration camps also existed prior to the Nazi regime, it was under the Nazis that the connotation of cruelty, persecution, and extermination became strongly associated with the term. In Nazi terminology, "Konzentrationslager" specifically denoted camps under the administration of the Gestapo (Germany's Secret State Police).