After the town was taken by British troops, and their house blown up by dynamite, the family was hoarded onto cattle trucks and taken to the concentration camp at Port Elizabeth. The Hertzog inmates in the camp included baby Albert, his mother Mynie, his paternal grandmother and a number of Albert's aunts and cousins. They lived in a thin shack of eight square meters.^[3] Albert's seven-year-old cousin, Charles, died of measles only twelve days after arrival. Albert himself nearly succumbed to the disease, and was sent to relatives in Stellenbosch for care and treatment. He stayed in Stellenbosch in the house of his paternal grandfather, Charl Neethling, until the end of the war.^[4] Mynie Neethling was visited by Lord Kitchener personally in the Port Elizabeth camp, where he offered her dismissal should she try and persuade her husband to lay down his arms. She refused, and was subsequently sent via ship to the Merebank camp at Durban.^[5] Merebank was notorious as one of the camps with the highest fatality rates. After her internment, Mynie Hertzog was prone to illness for the rest of her life.

As toddler, Albert attended an English Catholic pre-primary school, where he heard and learnt his first English. That move seemed baffling to some, because the Calvinist and Boer patriot General Hertzog was a staunch proponent of Afrikaans language rights, especially in education.^[6] In 1910, after the birth of the Union of South Africa, General Hertzog was appointed in a dual portfolio as Minister of Justice and Minister of Native Affairs. The family therefore moved to Pretoria, and occupied a house west of the Union Buildings. His father sent Albert to the Arcadia Skool, but Albert was disappointed that it had a headmistress and, though in the city, was no different to a farm school. Although only eleven years old, he left on the afternoon of his first day, and enrolled at Pretoria Boys High School.^[7] After the schism between General Hertzog and Prime Minister Louis Botha, which led to Hertzog's dismissal from the cabinet, the family moved back to Bloemfontein, where Albert attended Grey College. He matriculated in 1916, having studied Dutch, English, Latin, Mathematics, and Physical Science.^[8]

The terms verlig ("enlightened") and verkramp ("cramped") entered the Afrikaans (and later English) vernacular during the late 1960s. They were first used in a speech by prof. Willem de Klerk (son of Jan de Klerk and brother of future State President of South Africa, F.W. de Klerk) on 6 October 1966, exactly a month after the assassination of Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd.^[9] In his speech, De Klerk distinguished between verligte, verkrampte, and positiewe ("positive") Afrikaners. That threefold division would soon be simplified in the colloquial language to a simpler dichotomy between simply verlig and verkramp. What De Klerk called "positive Afrikaners" would then refer to what generally became known as verligte Afrikaners.^[9] He described positive Afrikaners (verligtes, thus) as "purpose conscious Afrikaners". "And purpose means to recognize the enduring and the changing. The closedness and the openness. The tradition and the progression... The purpose conscious Afrikaner recognizes and appreciates the tradition, and yet he is the man of today and with a vision on tomorrow, until eternity. The Afrikaner heritage is the Afrikaner-Christendom with the Calvinistic bedrock which recognizes the authority of the Bible as revelation and guide. But also he is open to further study of Scripture and he seeks the new roads to expand his religious heritage. At the same time the Afrikaner culture is young and virile, and is still busy to form itself on many levels, without having to cut ties with the past. The Book teaches clearly that exaggerated nationalism (idolatry of the People) as well as cosmopolitism contrast with the stipulations of God. Just as ungodly is the nationalized religion, which is the same as idolatry of the People."^[10]

De Klerk labeled the verkrampte Afrikaner as follows: "His fundamental axiom is: adherence to the extant, to the old ideas and customs and content is the test for being Afrikaner. He wants to lead us to rigidity; wants to exclude us from a new world; is a negativist. Also, he is ruled by the need to criticize. He is creative in his ability to sow distrust; hardened in the handling of one-sided slogans to generate witch hunts everywhere; accomplished in the technique of quibbling. He is without consideration and mercy, unwilling to converse, fanatic and extremist to enforce his opinion on a matter. He wants to forcefully push our youth into one-sidedness; haughty, stubborn self-preservation."^[11]

The verlig-verkramp-strife came to the fore after the assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd. Differences that had existed for a number of years began to manifest publicly, especially in the early days of new premier John Vorster's term.^[12]

In a press interview in 1979 he opined as follows: "In my view our political landscape is developing in the direction of a large, new conservative party which will consist of different people who are still currently trying to tread their own path. It can be a party consisting of the Treurnicht people in the NP, the Connie Mulder people, the HNP and definitely also conservative English speakers".^[15] This proved to be prophetic, as in 1982 a massive split occurred within the ruling National Party, and the Conservative Party came into being, with Andries Treurnicht as leader.

Hertzog died on 5 November 1982 during an emergency operation for a burst aorta.^[16] His funeral was held on 11 November 1982, in the NG Kerk in Waterkloof, and the service led by prof. Adriaan Pont. He was then laid to rest in the family cemetery on the farm Waterval, in the district of Witbank, next to his wife Katie, and close to his parents.^[17]