“I consider it necessary, however, that the hard-working prisoners be supplied in the freest form with females in brothels. [...] A rejection of [this condition] would mean being out of touch with life and the world.”

—Heinrich Himmler to Oswald Pohl; March 23, 1942

The above words were found in a letter dated March 23, 1942, from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to Oswald Pohl, the overseer of the Nazi concentration camp system. They reiterate an order initially given by Himmler in June of 1941 that had yet to be executed: the construction of the first prisoner brothel in Mauthausen Concentration Camp.

From 1942 to 1945, brothels were constructed in ten major concentration camps: Mauthausen, Gusen, Flossenbürg, Buchenwald, Auschwitz-Stammlager, Auschwitz-Monowitz, Neuengamme, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Mittelbau-Dora.^[1] These brothels, known as Sonderbauten (special constructions) by Nazis and Puffkommandos (brothel commands) by camp inmates, were part of the Prämien-System (bonus system)—a system devised by Hitler to incentivize productivity amongst concentration camp prisoners. Under the Prämien-System, Spitzenkräfte (top-notch employees) could receive Prämien-Vorschriften (bonus coupons) for their work, which could be exchanged for luxuries such as haircuts, cigarettes, extra food, and the right to visit a brothel (see fig. 1).^[2] Notably, Jewish prisoners were excluded from the camp brothel system—both from visiting brothels and from laboring in them.^[3] Brothels were primarily frequented by German prisoners. Due to German anti-miscegenation laws prohibiting sexual relations between Jews and people of German blood, Jewish women could not serve in camp brothels. From 1942 through 1945, over 200 women, most from the women’s camps of Ravensbrück and Auschwitz-Birkenau, were forced into prostitution. Of the 174 brothel workers whose identities were recorded, 66% were German, 26% were Polish, 2% were either Polish or German, 3% were Russian (including Ukrainian and Belorussian), 2% were unspecified Slavic, and 1% were Dutch.^[4]

Figure 1. Above are two examples of Prämien-Vorschriften distributed as part of Himmler’s incentivization program. On the left is a Buchenwald Prämienschein (scrip), valued at one Reichsmark.^[5] On the right is an Auschwitz Prämienschein, also valued at one Reichsmark.^[6] Both images were obtained from the USHMM photo archive collection, and both coupons are dated 1944.

Despite allegedly being created to incentivize workers, camp brothels were woefully ineffective. There was no increase in productivity following their implementation, yet they remained in operation for the duration of WWII. Instead, these brothels can be viewed as a way in which the Nazis strove to assert ever more control over camp inmates’ lives. With the invention of this forced prostitution system, gender identity became another tool of torture used by the Nazi regime. In this paper, I will present the camp brothel as a site of enhanced subjugation and degradation for women in an already dehumanizing environment. To achieve this goal, I will analyze the complex—and at times paradoxical—relationships between dehumanization, femininity, and rape within camp brothels.

To understand concentration camp brothels, I relied on a balance of secondary sources, witness testimony from brothel visitors and observers, and the scant recorded testimony of former brothel workers. Testimony from observers of camp brothels offers a limited portrait of the reality of forced prostitution in concentration camps. These testimonies are potentially influenced by the biases observers had against forced prostitutes and the rumors about brothels that spread within camps. I treated observer testimony with caution, balancing it where I could with the limited translated testimony of former forced prostitutes.

In general, there exists little scholarship on the Sonderbauten and even less direct primary source material; the few testimonies from former brothel workers that were recorded have not been translated into English in their entirety. This has to do with two things: the stigma surrounding rape post-WWII and the non-Jewish identity of the women forced to serve in brothels.

Following WWII, an oppressive sense of shame surrounded rape. There was also a pervasive belief post-liberation that concentration camp survivors must have collaborated with the enemy in some way to secure their lives. As such, many victims of sexual violence remained silent for fear of being stigmatized as defiled or labeled collaborators. For forced sex workers, this was especially true. Women who worked in brothels experienced better living conditions than their fellow inmates, fostering envy amongst other prisoners and giving brothel workers negative reputations as Nazi-lovers and sellouts. Overwhelmingly, other prisoners described brothel workers not as victims of rape or coercion, but as women who were “willing” to prostitute themselves for personal gain.^[7] While it is true that some women volunteered for Puffkommandos because they believed living in the brothel barracks would increase their chances of survival, the life-threatening environment of concentration camps made this a coerced decision, not indicative of true willingness or consent. Additionally, SS officers often lied to women when recruiting for Puffkommandos, falsely promising them release after six months if they joined.

To many women, Puffkommandos seemed like their best option—the life-saving lesser of two evils. Still, brothel workers had an intensely negative reputation post-war, and many remained silent to escape the ire or retribution of other concentration camp survivors. Mauthausen and Ravensbrück survivor Clementine U. expressed her disdain for forced prostitutes in a 2002 interview for the Yale Fortunoff Archive.

Clementine: The poeff-blocks were the brothels of the camps. [...] [The forced prostitutes] played on the affections of the SS. We weren't happy to see them again. I never knew any of them, and I've been in the governance of the survivors' organizations for years. But they probably don't dare show their faces. There were also a few that were killed.

Interviewer: By other prisoners, you mean?

Clementine: Yes. When you've seen someone stomped to death by an SS, you take revenge.^[8]

Given Clementine’s testimony regarding the violence that forced sex workers faced by other prisoners, it is unsurprising that these women remained silent about their experiences; speaking could be tantamount to a death sentence.

The position of forced sex workers in the hierarchy of camp victims also contributed to the silencing of their experiences. Because of anti-miscegenation laws that made having sex with Jewish women taboo, the Nazis staffed their brothels with non-Jews. The majority of women selected to work in camp brothels fell into a group that garnered particularly little sympathy post-WWII: asocials. Asocials were anyone the Nazis deemed of little worth to German society. This included Roma, Sinti, and the socially undesirable (often poor individuals who turned to begging, welfare, or prostitution for survival). Because asocials had not collectively been persecuted based on race, religion, or ideology, they were excluded from formal recognition as victims of the Holocaust. During the post-war Entschädigungsverfahren (compensation procedures), former camp inmates who were categorized as asocials received no compensation from either the Federal Republic of Germany or the German Democratic Republic.^[9] Their stories were not considered part of the “ideal” or “authentic” Holocaust testimony, nor did asocials fit into the “ideal victim community.”^[10] Most women forced into prostitution were asocials. Thus, they faced a double prejudice as both asocials and as victims of sexual violence.

Due to the lack of attention given to experiences of sexual violence or asocials post-war, camp brothels went unexplored in academia until the mid-1990s. In 1994, historian Christa Paul published her book Zwangsprostitution: Staatlich errichtete Bordelle im Nationalsozialismus, which translates to Forced Prostitution: State-built Brothels Under National Socialism. Paul’s work explored topics including the criminalization of prostitution in the Reich, the logistics of the Prämien-System, the physical locations of brothels within camps, and the living conditions of brothel workers. The next notable contribution to scholarship—and the basis for my interest in this topic—was the work of historian Robert Sommer. In the early 2000s, Sommer conducted extensive research on the entire system of camp brothels, publishing several papers and a book (Das KZ Bordell: sexuelle Zwangsarbeit in nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern, in English, The Concentration Camp Brothel: Forced Sexual Labor in National Socialist Concentration Camps) detailing the specifics of camp brothel operations. In these publications, Sommer made commentary on the use of brothels by male prisoners to counteract dehumanization by reaffirming their masculinity.^[11] In a 2008 essay, Sommer wrote, “Men wanted to see whether they were still men, in both a physical and emotional sense. Remasculinization became part of regaining one’s sexual identity, which had been destroyed since the beginning of confinement in the camp.”^[12] However, unexplored in Sommer’s work is an analysis of the effects of camp brothels on women’s conceptions of femininity. This is the gap my paper seeks to fill.

Women were simultaneously humanized and degraded in camp brothels. They enjoyed better living conditions than other camp inmates and regained physical markers of femininity camp living conditions denied other women; however, they were also subjected to months (and, in some cases, years) of systematic rapes. The relationship between humanization and dehumanization in camp brothels was more than paradoxical. It was intentional. In this paper, I will show that, in camp brothels, gender was instrumentalized against forced sex workers to further degrade them; more specifically, cycles of forced dehumanization and feminization perpetrated by the Nazis served to weaponize women’s femininity against them and enhance their suffering.

Defeminization as Dehumanization

To put the enhanced degradation of forced sex workers into perspective, it is crucial to first understand the role of dehumanization in Nazi concentration camps more broadly. Concentration camps were purposely engineered to humiliate victims and strip them of their humanity. The subjugation of camp inmates was dependent on their dehumanization. Notable German-Jewish philosopher and historian, Hannah Arendt, in her Origins of Totalitarianism, described concentration camps’ function as the reduction of human beings into things lesser than animals. Arendt wrote, “The camps are meant not only to exterminate people and degrade human beings, but also serve the ghastly experiment […] of transforming the human personality into a mere thing, into something that even animals are not.”^[13] Auschwitz survivor Gisella Perl made a similar claim in her 1948 memoir I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz. Of the dehumanization she experienced in the camp, Perl wrote, “One of the basic Nazi aims was to demoralize, humiliate, ruin us, not only physically but also spiritually. They did everything in their power to push us to the bottomless depths of degradation.”^[14]

The chief method Nazis employed to dehumanize concentration camp inmates was subjecting them to inhumane living conditions. Among other tortures, prisoners were deprived of food, denied the opportunity to bathe or change their clothes, forced to sleep on crowded wooden slabs, and given no access to clean, running water. Perl’s description of the appalling camp latrines in Auschwitz reveals that inmates were not even afforded toilet paper.

There was one latrine for thirty to thirty-two thousand women and we were permitted to use it only at certain hours of the day. We stood in line to get into this tiny building, knee deep in human excrement. [...] The latrine consisted of a deep ditch with planks thrown across it at certain intervals. We squatted on these planks like birds on a telegraph wire, so close together that we could not help soiling one another.

No one who had to live without the small comforts of even the poorest kind of life can imagine what it is to have to do, for instance, without [toilet] paper.^[15]

In an unprecedented environment, deprived of every comfort of normal life, it grew hard for inmates to recognize themselves as human. Most of their daily habits did not resemble any humanity they had known pre-war. Thus, as time passed, inmates “sank deeper and deeper into [a] subhuman existence.”^[16] Indeed, Perl wrote, “[in Auschwitz] I was only a shadow without identity, alive only by the power of suffering.”^[17]

However, it wasn't just inhumane living conditions that made it difficult for inmates to recognize themselves as human beings. They also struggled to recognize their bodies as bodies with gender. A notable method of dehumanization employed by the Nazis was stripping victims of the social identifiers they previously used to define their humanity. For women, defeminization was a crucial means by which dehumanization was achieved. Upon entering the camps, all female identifiers were taken away from women: their hair was shorn, their possessions (including jewelry) were seized, and they were given ill-fitting, often androgynous clothing. Perl described the experience of being disinfected upon entering Auschwitz as one that fundamentally altered women’s conceptions of their gender identity.^[18] According to Perl, when she and other women first entered the camp’s disinfection rooms, they were “still human beings, women.”^[19] They had hair on their heads and retained their individuality. The violation of the women’s physical appearances (through the shaving of their heads, for instance) resulted in a loss of identity—both feminine and human. Perl described the hair that littered the ground after women were shaved as the fallen “crown of female beauty.”^[20] She recalled, “When we finally emerged [from the disinfection rooms] the street looked like a ghostly carnival. Sisters, friends did not recognize each other any longer, and the prettiest girls and most beautiful women looked like a bunch of grisly monsters, ridiculous and sub-human.”^[21] Another survivor remarked, “At the precise time my head was shaved, I ceased to exist as a human being.”^[22]As gender is socially constructed, it relies on outward indicators. With the removal of all social markers of femininity, women were no longer able to recognize their bodies as female. And, because “female” was the dominant term women used to categorize their humanity, the stripping of femininity constituted a stripping of humanity as well.

As women’s time spent in the camps increased, defeminization (and subsequent dehumanization) were heightened. Malnourishment caused women to lose their breasts and hips, and 98 percent of women stopped menstruating.^[23] The loss of these biological markers of femininity in addition to social markers made it even harder for women to recognize their bodies. “[What is] a woman who doesn’t menstruate?” survivor Erna Rubinstein wondered.^[24] What is a woman without hips or breasts? Without hair?

Methods of Re-feminization

Because of the intentional steps the Nazis took to deprive women of femininity, most women in concentration camps retained only the barest vestiges of a “womanly” appearance. This posed a problem for the implementation of camp brothels. For the brothels to function, the women forced to serve in them needed to be physically appealing to male customers. A transformation had to occur; those chosen for forced prostitution had to resemble women again. Thus, in camp brothels slim measures of femininity and humanity were returned to women.

The first step in the process of re-feminizing brothel workers was to make them recognizable as humans again. As such, forced prostitutes lived in relatively humane conditions compared to the rest of the camps. Each brothel barrack was equipped with a sanitary facility, a medical room, and private bedrooms. To produce an inviting feel for male clients, brothel barracks were the only barracks equipped with curtains and proper furniture (see Fig. 2). Brothel workers were permitted to bathe once a day, were fed extra rations, and were given new clothes. Meanwhile, the majority of camp prisoners bathed monthly at most and possessed only one lice-ridden pair of clothes. Additionally, brothel workers received access to indoor plumbing—a far cry from wading through human excrement to reach the dirty slab of wood that passed for a latrine in the other barracks. “We had a bathroom with a certain number of water closets. It didn’t lack cleanliness there,” former Buchenwald prostitute Magdalena Walter recalled.^{[25], [26]} Many men interviewed post-war about camp brothels remarked that brothel workers were far better off than the average inmate. One even claimed that “they got the same food as the SS.”^[27] While this is untrue, brothel workers were fed more than most camp inmates. In addition to improved living conditions, brothel workers were even afforded special luxuries such as access to non-political books.^[28] While undoubtedly oppressive, the atmosphere created in camp brothels marginally humanized women.^[29] But, to be appealing to men, forced prostitutes not only needed to resemble humans again; they needed to resemble women.

Figure 2. Above are photographs of the Buchenwald brothel. These photos were displayed in an exhibition at the Ravensbrück Memorial Museum in August 2012. They were taken by the Buchenwald concentration camp records office, a department within the camp tasked with creating official photo albums for the SS. The records office was mainly staffed by German and French inmates. The office was in operation until August 24, 1944, when it was struck by an Allied air raid and rendered unusable. Most photos kept there were destroyed by the attack.^[30]

Thus, women chosen to work in camp brothels were given back physical markers of conventional feminine attractiveness. Their hair was grown out, and they were dressed in feminine clothes. Mister J., a former Auschwitz inmate who visited the Auschwitz-Stammlager brothel, described one of the forced prostitutes he met as “well groomed.” “She used to have hair on her head,” he said.^[31] Birkenau and Ravensbrück survivor Alice G. made a similar remark in a 1995 interview for the Yale Fortunoff Archive. “[The Puffkommando] received better food and even dye to color their hair blond. Their hair was not cut like ours,” she claimed.^[32] Women’s appearances, especially their clothing, were a stark contrast to the conditions of other female camp inmates. According to a statement from survivor Sofia Bator, she once saw a brothel worker “dressed in a blue shirt with black lace, a sky-blue dressing gown, and high heeled slippers.”^[33] The accuracy of this recollection is uncertain; it may be that the extravagance Bator attributed to the dress of forced prostitutes was motivated by rumors she heard about the special conditions in which brothel workers lived. Records point to the clothing of forced prostitutes being much less luxurious than Bator recalled; however, it is inarguable that brothel workers were dressed better than other inmates. In the Buchenwald brothel, the ‘uniform’ of women consisted of “a white plaid skirt (under which they were allowed to wear panties) and a bra.”^[34] Comparatively, most camp inmates wore dirty rags and ill-fitting, mismatched shoes. Bras were particularly difficult to come by and, given the emaciation of most women, were largely unnecessary. The provision of bras to brothel workers in Buchenwald likely indicates that increased rations had caused the women to regain their breasts—a biological symbol of femininity that had previously been taken from them. Some witness testimony even indicates that forced prostitutes wore makeup. Polish-Jewish survivor Benjamin H recalled seeing a woman with makeup looking out the open window of the Buchenwald brothel.^[35] This point was reiterated by Italian-Jewish survivor Liana Millu.^[36] In Smoke Over Birkenau, Millu’s collection of short stories based on her experiences, Millu described a note written by a brothel worker as smelling of face powder.^[37]

The return of hair, clothing, and make-up to forced sex workers made them physically resemble women again. Important to remember, however, is that the re-feminization of brothel workers was not a kindness. Rather, it was a precursor to their further humiliation and degradation. Only when women resembled their prewar selves would they be appealing to men. Only then would they be suitable for rape.

Femininity in the camps was a precondition to a woman’s rapability. The association between being feminine and being rapable is especially evident in witness testimony about the relationship between beauty and selection for prostitution. Given the androgyny imposed on female prisoners in concentration camps, “looking remotely feminine was a source of attractiveness.”^[38] Primary sources repeatedly emphasize the beauty of the women who were singled out to work in brothels. For instance, Auschwitz survivor Jakov T. recalled, “Block 6 was a block of ‘chosen women.’ They took the prettiest women from each transport. It was right next to us. They turned it into a brothel.”^[39] Eve Gabori, another survivor, described some of the rumors that circulated about camp brothels. She said, “Very, very good looking and pretty young women were taken to a certain house where they were used as prostitutes.”^[40] Beauty became something to be fearful of, as it brought sexual violence and suffering to women. In fact, German Jew Margarete L. recalled intentionally making herself appear unattractive to avoid being selected for brothel work.

Margarete: My mother took care that I always should look disheveled and not too good, you know? Because if you look too good, [it] wasn't good either. Somebody–

Interviewer: What were you afraid of?

Margarete: I was afraid of they might take me, and I might—may become a prostitute. [...] My mother, she said, the hair has to be completely…bedraggled, you know. She tried to make me look as ugly as possible.”^[41]

As evidenced in Margarete’s testimony, in concentration camps the appearance of femininity was dangerous and instrumentalized by the Nazis for further subjugation.

On the Nature of Rape

Perversely, recognition of a woman’s femininity became the cause of her rape. The rape of a woman by a man is typically a show of power and dominance—an assertion of masculinity. Sommer described the majority of brothel visitors as men who sought to “feel like a masculine human being” by having sex with a woman.^[42] He wrote, “Men wanted to see whether they were still men, in both a physical and emotional sense.”^[43] But, for a man’s assertion of masculinity to be effective, the man must be asserting his masculinity over someone he perceives to be feminine. In her 2002 essay “Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words: A Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention,” Sharon Marcus wrote, “A rapist chooses his target because he recognizes her to be a woman.”^[44] In concentration camps, women were only candidates for the organized rape that occurred in brothels if they were perceived to be sufficiently feminine. Most men would likely have derived little pleasure from having sex with women who were physically emaciated and resembled prepubescent children. Survivor Ursula Schwadron, in describing how she avoided selection for prostitution, mentioned her lack of womanly appearance as a saving grace. “They told all the girls to stand up, and told them to come—except me. [...] I was a little underdeveloped, I was skinny, I looked like a ten-year old, I guess.”^[45] The rape of forced sex workers in camp brothels, then, relied upon recognition of prostitutes’ femininity. That’s why beautiful women were singled out for brothel work and why forced prostitutes’ feminization—through clothing, hair, and makeup—was so important. Each rape a forced prostitute endured became confirmation of her reclamation of the outward appearance of femininity—validation that she was “woman” enough to be raped.

Femininity was mobilized against brothel workers to expose them to the unique degradation that comes only from sexual violation. Outside the context of concentration camp brothels, the act of rape is already inherently dehumanizing and humiliating; during rape, a victim is denied any status as an active subject, reduced to a body being used for another’s pleasure. This was especially true in camp brothels, where the industrialization and heavy surveillance of rape made the experience particularly dehumanizing.

Sex was highly mechanized in camp brothels. Forced sex workers, despite physically resembling women again, were treated as little more than objects—much-abused cogs in a brutal machine. As only “normal sex” in the missionary position was allowed, women were made to lie on their backs for hours on end as they were abused.^[46] Every 15 minutes, one man would leave and another would take his place. Brothel workers were meant to be sex tools and nothing more; there could be no humanizing element in their sexual interactions. One former brothel worker remarked, “One felt like a robot. They did not take notice of us; we were the lowest of the low. We were only good for this. No conversation or small talk, not even the weather was on the agenda. Everything was so mechanical and indifferent.”^[47]  In the two weeks following the Buchenwald brothel’s opening, demand for sex was so high that each of the 15 women in the brothel was forced to serve 10-15 men each day.^[48] Magdalena Walter recalled her experience in the brothel: “Now every night we had to let the men get on top of us, for two hours. That meant they could come into the brothel barrack [...] could go to the number – to the prisoner, could do their thing, into the room, on top, down, out. [...] And then right away there came the next one. Non-stop. And they didn’t have more than a quarter of an hour.”^[49]

Beyond being industrialized, rape in camp brothels was also heavily surveilled. Sexual interactions between brothel workers and camp inmates were strictly policed to prevent the development of relationships. SS members watched women’s rapes through spy holes in bedroom doors and beat prisoners if they took longer than their allotted 15 minutes. To prevent camp inmates from enacting any fanciful plans of providing a specific brothel worker with food, protection, or comfort, Nazis often mixed up the rooms women were placed in or rotated women out of the brothels entirely and replaced them with others.^[50] Sex was not allowed to be an exchange but was instead something that was inflicted upon women. Naturally, women were not allowed to exert any agency over their circumstances. The concentration camp brothel became a prison within a prison—a site of degradation within the ultimate site of degradation—governed by the same laws of control and surveillance that terrorized the rest of life within the camps.

Cycles of Dehumanization and Feminization

The feminization of forced prostitutes was akin to the fattening of a cow for slaughter. Yet, it was not only the fact that feminization became a precursor to rape that made it so cruel. Crucial to note is that the dehumanization that resulted from rape was different from the dehumanization that occurred when women first arrived at concentration camps. Upon their initial dehumanization, women mourned their lost womanhood. They despaired over the shaving of their heads and the seizure of their clothes. In camp brothels, womanhood became the enemy. The rape of brothel workers represented the weaponization of their bodies against them. Elaine Scarry, in her book The Body in Pain, described the pain experienced during instances of torture as a “vehicle of self-betrayal” in which “the person in great pain experiences [their] own body as the agent of [their] agony.”^[51] Scarry wrote, “The prisoner’s body [...] is [...] made to betray him on behalf of the enemy, made to be the enemy.”^[52] In the case of forced sex workers, their femininity was what brought more opportunities for degradation upon them. For instance, if a woman regained a biological indicator of femininity like menstruation and was unfortunate enough to become pregnant, she would be subject to a traumatizing forced abortion.^[53],[54] Womanhood was corrupted from a marker of identity and a source of pride into a source of pain.

The Nazis’ manipulation of gender is further complicated by the fact that the sexual violation of brothel workers forcefully feminized them. Sharon Marcus wrote, “rape is one of culture’s many modes of feminizing women. [...] a rapist [...] strives to imprint the gender identity of ‘feminine victim’ on his target.”^[55] When a woman is raped, “associations of weakness and vulnerability traditionally associated with femininity” are triggered and imposed upon her.^[56] Rape “forces the victim into a particular role within sexual relations that is typically allocated to the feminine party.”^[57] When camp brothel workers were raped, their femininity was not just acknowledged. They were actively forced into a gender dynamic in which their victimization made them female again. Rape effectively “‘produced’ women in an environment in which womanhood, as it had been known before, no longer existed.”^[58] Thus, experiences of feminization and dehumanization in camp brothels became inextricable (and almost cyclical). Rape necessitated feminization, which simultaneously dehumanized and further feminized victims. Femininity became both the cause and the outcome of sexual degradation.

 In an environment in which dehumanization was the ultimate goal and prisoners were stripped of all individuality, forced brothel workers were dealt the additional blow of having gender weaponized against them. By devising a system of concentration camp brothels, the Nazis may not have enhanced workers’ productivity, but they did enhance their own control. In camp brothels, Nazis could bestow humanity and take it away. They could return a woman's femininity and then use it to further degrade her. Due to the dearth of translated primary source material from former brothel prostitutes and the relative recentness of academic exploration of the camp brothel system, questions remain about the impact of forced prostitution on women’s relationships with gender. I wonder, to what extent were forced sex workers cognizant that gender was being manipulated to make them more fit for degradation? Did they grow to resent their femininity for the additional suffering it brought them? Post-war, many women who endured sexual violence experienced feelings of deep shame. While imprisoned, forced sex workers enjoyed the benefits of improved living conditions and the return of prewar gender identities. Did this cause them to somehow feel complicit in their own degradation? Was post-war shame exacerbated for forced sex workers because of the way feminization, rape, and dehumanization became interwoven? It is unclear when these questions will be answered. What is clear is that this organized sexual exploitation of women was essential to the destruction of humanity within concentration camps. The historical questions about forced prostitution that remain prove the importance of testimony collection and analysis from a gendered perspective.

Footnotes

^[1] Robert Sommer, “Camp Brothels: Forced Sex Labor in Nazi Concentration Camps,” in Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe’s Twentieth Century, eds. Dagmar Herzog, Genders and Sexualities in History (Basingstoke: England; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 171.

^[2] Sommer, “Camp Brothels.”

^[3] There were no institutionalized prisoner brothels created for Jewish women. However, that is not to say that Jewish women were immune to sexual abuse while imprisoned in concentration camps. The opposite was true.

^[4] Sommer, “Camp Brothels,” 175.

^[5] Buchenwald Subcamp Scrip, 1 Reichsmark Note for Use in Rottleberode, 1944, No. 2003.413.33, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC.

^[6] Auschwitz Concentration Camp Scrip 1 Reichsmark, in 2 Pieces, Received by an Inmate, 1944, No. 2014.492.1 a-b, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection.

^[7] Paul, “Forced Prostitution of Girls and Women under National Socialism,” 117.

^[8] Clementine U., “Clementine U. Holocaust Testimony,” February 25th, 2002, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, New Haven, CT.

^[9] Verena Schneider, “The Negation of Suffering: Forced Sex Labor in Concentration Camp Brothels in Remembrance and Research,” in War and Sexual Violence: New Perspectives in a New Era, ed. Sarah Kristina Danielsson (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2019), 134.

^[10] Schneider, 135.

^[11] While I have included the English translation of the title of Sommer’s book, the book has not yet been published in English.

^[12] Sommer, “Camp Brothels,” 184-5.

^[13] Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Wilmington: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Trade & Reference Publishers, 1973), 438.

^[14] Gisella Perl, I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz (New York: Arno Press, 1979), 75.

^[15] Perl, 32–33.

^[16] Perl, 75.

^[17] Perl, 56.

^[18] Disinfection refers to the process by which inmates, upon arriving at concentration camps, were shaved, stripped, and washed with chemicals.

^[19] Perl, I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz, 42.

^[20] Perl, 44.

^[21] Perl, 47.

^[22] Monika Flaschka, “‘Only Pretty Women Were Raped’: The Effect of Sexual Violence on Gender Identities in Concentration Camps,” in Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust, eds. Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saide (Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2010), 81.

^[23] “New Research Provides Theory on Why Women Stopped Menstruating Upon Arrival at Nazi Death Camps,” Neuroscience News, September 21, 2022.

^[24] Erna F. Rubinstein, The Survivor in Us All: A Memoir of the Holocaust (Hamden: Archon Books, 1983), 152.

^[25] Sommer, “Camp Brothels,” 174.

^[26] As one of few former concentration camp prostitutes whose remarks have been translated to English, Walter is an especially valuable primary source. She experienced firsthand the degradation of forced prostitution and the paradoxical humanization that occurred in the brothels’ living quarters. Mere observers of forced prostitution were prone to more exaggerated accounts of the “luxuries” afforded to forced prostitutes, especially as rumors of the living conditions in brothel barracks spread across concentration camps.

^[27] Schneider, “The Negation of Suffering,” 139.

^[28] Sommer, “Camp Brothels,” 174.

^[29] One should not forget that brothel workers were still prisoners. They were raped multiple times a day and were subject to physical abuse by Nazi guards.

^[30] Buchenwald Concentration Camp Records Office, Buchenwald Brothel Photographs in Black and White, 1943, photo, Photographs from the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, 1937–1945 digital collection, Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation.

^[31] Schneider, “The Negation of Suffering,” 140.

^[32] Alice G., “Alice G. Holocaust Testimony,” March 30th & April 7th, 1995, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies.

^[33] Robert Sommer, “Forced Prostitution in National Socialist Camps—The Example of Auschwitz,” in Forced Prostitution in Times of War and Peace: Sexual Violence against Women and Girls, 129.

^[34] Sommer, “Camp Brothels,” 174.

^[35] Benjamin H, H, “Benjamin H. Holocaust Testimony,” June 15th, 1993, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies.

^[36] The level of fictionalization in Millu’s account is difficult to ascertain. In the book’s forward, Primo Levi describes it as “one of the most powerful European testimonies to come from the women’s lager at Auschwitz-Birkenau.” At the very least, the fact that Millu wrote of a forced prostitute’s access to make-up establishes that the feminization of prostitutes was widely known. See Primo Levi, “Foward,” in Smoke over Birkenau, Liana Millu, 1st English ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 157.

^[37] Millu, Smoke over Birkenau, 157.

^[38] Flaschka, “‘Only Pretty Women Were Raped’,” 83.

^[39] Jakov T., “Jakov T. Holocaust Testimony,” April 30th, May 6th & June 3rd, 1995, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies.

^[40] Flaschka, “‘Only Pretty Women Were Raped’,” 84.

^[41] Margarete L., “Margarete L. Holocaust Testimony,” November 21st, 1987, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies.

^[42] Sommer, “Camp Brothels,” 184.

^[43] Sommer, 184.

^[44] Sharon Marcus, “Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words: A Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention,” in Feminists Theorize the Political, eds. Judith Butler and Joan W. Scott (New York : Routledge, 1992), 391.

^[45] Flaschka, “‘Only Pretty Women Were Raped’,” 85.

^[46] Sommer, “Forced Prostitution in National Socialist Camps,” 130.

^[47] Julia Roos, “Backlash against Prostitutes’ Rights: Origins and Dynamics of Nazi Prostitution Policies,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 11, no. 1/2 (2002): 94.

^[48] Schneider, “The Negation of Suffering,” 138.

^[49] Sommer, “Camp Brothels,” 174.

^[50] Sommer, 178.

^[51] Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain : The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 47.

^[52] Scarry, 48.

^[53] Despite the Nazi obsession with limiting the spread of disease (especially venereal disease), condoms were not used in concentration camp brothels. Women were given no protection from pregnancy.

^[54] Schneider, “The Negation of Suffering: Forced Sex Labor in Concentration Camp Brothels in Remembrance and Research,” 143.

^[55] Marcus, “Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words: A Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention,” 391.

^[56] Eva Mulder, Antony Pemberton, and Ad J. J. M. Vingerhoets, “The Feminizing Effect of Sexual Violence in Third-Party Perceptions of Male and Female Victims,” Sex Roles 82, no. 1 (January 1, 2020): 13–27.

^[57] Mulder, Pemberton, and Vingerhoets.

^[58] Flaschka, “‘Only Pretty Women Were Raped’,” 89.

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