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German concentration camp brothels

Active camp brothel in Gusen, Austria (c. 1942)

Organization Formed by Schutzstaffel Operation 1942–1945 Locations Mauthausen/Gusen, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Neuengamme, Dachau, Dora-Mittelbau, Sachsenhausen, Flossenbürg and others

In World War II, Nazi Germany established brothels in the concentration camps (Lagerbordell or Freudenabteilungen "Joy Divisions") to increase productivity among inmates. Their use was restricted to the more privileged Aryan prisoners, primarily the Kapos, or "prisoner functionaries", and the criminal element. Jewish inmates were prohibited from using the brothels according to rules against racial mixing, as were German guards or soldiers. In the end, the camp brothels did not produce any noticeable increase in the prisoners' productivity levels but, instead, created a market for coupons among the more privileged camp prisoners.

The women forced into these brothels came mainly from the women-only Ravensbrück concentration camp, except for Auschwitz, which used its own prisoners. In combination with the German military brothels in World War II, it is estimated that at least 34,140 female inmates were forced into sexual slavery during the Third Reich.

History and operation

The first camp brothel was established in Mauthausen/Gusen in 1942. After 30 June 1943, a camp brothel existed in Auschwitz in "Block 24", and from 15 July 1943, in Buchenwald. The one in Neuengamme was established in early 1944, Dachau's in May 1944, Dora-Mittelbau's in late summer, and Sachsenhausen's on 8 August 1944. There are conflicting dates for the camp brothel in Flossenbürg: one source claims summer 1943; another states it was not opened until 25 March 1944.

The camp brothels were usually built as barracks surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, with small individual rooms for up to 20 female prisoners, controlled by a female overseer (Aufseherin). The women were replaced frequently due to exhaustion and illness, after which they were sent away to become regular inmates in Birkenau. The brothels were open only in the evenings. No Jewish male prisoners were allowed as patrons. Those with access to the customer lineup ("Aryan VIPs" only), had to sign up for a specific day and pay two Reichsmarks for a 20-minute "service" based on a predetermined schedule. The women were matched with clients by an SS-man. The people ironically described as "Aryan VIPs" included the Polish Christian prisoners, and those who had been sentenced to the camps for criminal activities and so wore the green triangles (hence the "green men" denomination). There is somewhat controversial evidence that in some of the brothels, women might have had tattoos inscribed on their chests saying Feld-Hure ("field whore"). Some of them underwent forced sterilizations as well as forced abortions, often resulting in death. At Auschwitz, the women "were mostly German or Polish — none of them were Jewish", and members "of the Wehrmacht and SS were not allowed to visit" them. "A military brothel for German soldiers and SS guards also existed, but it was located outside of the camp, and all women there were German civilian prostitutes." While there certainly were reports by survivors of male German guards sexually abusing female Jewish inmates at Auschwitz and elsewhere, "no archival evidence exists that points to the systematic rape of Jewish women in concentration camps or of their enslavement in Nazi brothels."

The brothels were mentioned in memoirs and novels by survivors, such as Ka-Tzetnik's 1953 novel House of Dolls, Primo Levi's 1947 memoir If This Is A Man, and Josef Kohout's The Men With the Pink Triangle, written under the pseudonym of Heinz Heger, but were not a subject of academic study until the mid-1990s, when publications by female researchers broke the scholarly silence.

Sometimes the SS enticed women into serving in the brothels by promising them more humane treatment or reductions of their indefinite sentence. This caused anger or envy among other female inmates. Nina Michailovna, a Russian camp prisoner, reported: "When we found out that a girl in our block was chosen, we caught her and threw a blanket on her and beat her up so badly that she could hardly move. It wasn't clear if she would recover. They just wanted to have a better life and we punished them this way."

Homosexual prisoners and camp brothels

Heinrich Himmler also attempted to use these brothels to teach pink triangle prisoners "the joys of the opposite sex", i.e., as "therapy" for their homosexuality. Heger claims that Himmler directed that all gay prisoners were to make compulsory visits to the camp brothel once per week as a means of "curing" them of homosexuality.

Cultural references

The French documentary Night and Fog mentioned the existence of concentration camp brothels as early as 1955. This film, by director Alain Resnais, included extensive original footage of the camps and was based on interviews with survivors. German concentration camp brothels were also re-enacted in fictional Nazi exploitation films made in the 1970s such as Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, Last Orgy of the Third Reich, Love Camp 7, SS Experiment Camp and Nazi Love Camp 27. Examples of Israeli literature on the subject include writer's Yehiel De-Nur's novel The House of Dolls (published using his concentration camp number Ka-Tsetnik 135633 as a pseudonym) and the Stalag fiction genre.

Czech author Arnošt Lustig wrote a novel Lovely Green Eyes (ISBN 1559706961), which tells a story of a 15-year-old Jewish girl deported to a camp and forced to serve in a brothel during World War II. In the 1950s-set Australian television drama A Place to Call Home, the main character, Sarah Adams, is an Australian who converted to Judaism and was imprisoned at Ravensbrück concentration camp before being forced into a camp brothel.

The English rock band Joy Division was named after the camp brothels at Auschwitz as described in the 1953 novel House of Dolls.

See also

• Comfort women (Japan)
• German military brothels in World War II
• German war crimes
• Recreation and Amusement Association (Japan)
• Sexual slavery by Germany during World War II
• War rape by German forces during World War II

Notes

1. ^ "Camp Brothel". Wollheim Memorial. Accessed June 30, 2011.
2. New Exhibition Documents Forced Prostitution in Concentration Camps - Der Spiegel - 15 January 2007
3. ^ Nanda Herbermann; Hester Baer; Elizabeth Roberts Baer (2000). The Blessed Abyss: Inmate #6582 in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp for Women (Google Books). Detroit: Wayne State University Press. pp. 33–34. ISBN 0-8143-2920-9.
4. ^ Christl Wickert: Tabu Lagerbordell, in: Eschebach/Jacobeit/Wenk: Gedächtnis und Geschlecht, 2002, S. 44
5. ^ Heinz Heger, Die Männer mit dem rosa Winkel, 5th ed., 2001, p. 137
6. Tom Segev, "Who was the camp whore?" Haaretz.com, January 13, 2011. Quote: Na'ama Shik of Yad Vashem's Institute for Holocaust Education, asserts on the basis of doctoral research that the Nazis did not employ Jewish prostitutes in the camp, and that at the time they used the series of numbers seen in the picture at Auschwitz, numbers were no longer etched on prisoners' chests, but only on their arms.
7. Melissa Kuntz (2007), The Forgotten Photographs: The Work of Paul Goldman from 1943-1961, Pittsburgh: American Jewish Museum, See: photograph of an inmate with chest tattoo published by Jerusalem Post, retrieved January 10, 2011
8. ^ Bos, Pascale; Sommer, Robert (2014). Earl, Hilary; Schleunes, Karl A. (eds.). Lessons and Legacies Volume XI: Expanding Perspectives on the Holocaust in a Changing World. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. pp. 60–89. ISBN 978-0-8101-3091-3.
9. ^ Ka-tzetnik 135633. The House of Dolls. ISBN 1-85958-506-X.
10. Christa Schulz, "Weibliche Häftlinge aus Ravensbrück in Bordellen der Männerkonzentrationslager" (Female prisoners from Ravensbrück in brothels for male concentration camp prisoners)
11. Christa Paul, Zwangsprostitution. Staatlich errichtete Bordelle im Nationalsozialismus (Forced prostitution: Brothels established by the National Socialist State).
12. In: Thomas Gaevert / Martin Hilbert: "Frauen als Beute" ("Women as Booty"), 2004 documentary film made for ARD. Quote in German: "Wenn wir wußten, daß in unserem Block eine ausgesucht wurde, haben wir sie geschnappt und ihr eine Decke übergeworfen und sie so verprügelt, daß sie sich nicht mehr rühren konnte. Es war unklar, ob sie sich davon überhaupt wieder erholen könnte. Die wollten doch nur ein schöneres Leben haben und wir haben sie so bestraft."
13. Stiglegger, Marcus (2007-02-09). "Beyond Good and Evil? Sadomasochism politics cinema 1970s". IKONEN. Ikonenmagazin.de. Retrieved 2010-03-14.
14. Sterngast, Tal (5 August 2007). "Schultzes Hündin". Die Tageszeitung: Taz (in German).
15. "Folternde, vollbusige SS-Frauen «". Diepresse.com. 2010-02-18. Retrieved 2010-03-14.
16. Dorothy Rabinowitz (December 12, 2014), Review of ‘A Place to Call Home’: High Drama From Down Under. The Wall Street Journal.
17. "How Joy Division got their name - Far Out Magazine". 25 January 2021.

Books

• Christl Wickert (1996). "Das große Schweigen; Zwangsprostitution im Dritten Reich (The Big Silence: Forced Prostitution on the Third Reich)". WerkstattGeschichte (in German). 13: 90–95. ISSN 0933-5706.

• Nazi concentration camps
• Nazi forced labour
• Brothels
• Forced prostitution
• Sexual slavery during wars
• Sexual violence in Europe during World War II