Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust

3: Sexual Exploitation of Women in Nazi Concentration Camp Brothels

chapter @ 3 Sexual Exploitation of Women in Nazi Concentration Camp Brothels ROBERT SOMMER The Establishment of Brothels in Concentration Camps The history of brothels in National Socialist concentration camps has for many years been ignored by historians. Various novels and movies have referred to brothels for SS guards in which Jewish women were raped,1 but the notion of brothel barracks created for prisoners has seemed completely absurd. Since the 1990s, however, scholars have begun to discover and analyze the so-called Sonderbauten (special buildings), the SS euphemism for these brothels.2 In the summer of 1941 Heinrich Himmler, together with Oswald Pohl, chief of the Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt (wvha)—the economic and administrative main o