Das KZ-Bordell: Sexuelle Zwangsarbeit in nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern (review)

This comprehensive survey of the bizarre phenomenon of concentration camp brothels is written with much sympathy for the employed prisoners: “sexual forced laborers” (Sex-Zwangsarbeiterinnen) (22) who were excluded, as “prostitutes,” from the type of compensation granted to many other victims of Nazi persecution after the war. Robert Sommer punctures many myths. For example, he rejects the assumption that SS men had their own brothels in their training camps, and deplores the long-lived and false depiction in the popular media of the rape of Jewish women in SS brothels. Instead, Sommer thinks that the SS men stationed at Dachau simply drove into Munich for sex, though other research indicates that they also found willing partners at local dance halls in Dachau itself (Geoffrey J. Giles, “The Denial of Homosexuality: Same-Sex Incidents in Himmler’s SS and Police,” in Sexuality and German Fascism, Dagmar Herzog, ed. [New York: Berghahn, 2005], 279). Several camps did have brothels with Polish sex workers for the Ukrainian guards, but not for the German SS men. There were also brothels for some inmates in ten camps. Himmler, who was impressed with the Soviet incentive system designed to increase production output in the Gulags, wanted something similar at Buchenwald, where the most productive inmates were to receive three types of bonuses: cigarettes, cash (or at least camp vouchers), and visits to the camp brothel. The concentration camp administrator Oswald Pohl set about this with his usual bureaucratic efficiency.

The brothel barracks in the Auschwitz Stammlager (with sixteen rooms) cost RM 30,000 to build, which officials aimed to recoup from clients. And takings were indeed substantial: between RM 14,000 and 19,000 in the first six months at Buchenwald, for example. The records are sketchy, but Sommer extensively uses some highly detailed logs, which even included the names of clients. Political prisoners claimed after the war that they had shunned the brothels, but there is evidence that some of them were in fact frequent clients. Customers were, for the most part, privileged inmates, often block leaders or Kapos. Mauthausen lists show that 60 percent of the clients were criminals, which likely reflected the fact that the SS tended to fill functionary positions with green-triangle inmates. Sommer casts doubt on other claims as well, for example, that the SS forced pink-triangle prisoners to make repeated visits in an attempt to cure them of their homosexuality. At the same time, he comments widely on the whole issue of sexuality in the camps, using postwar memoirs and surveys. Malnutrition led to the fading of sexual urges: the most common practice was occasional masturbation every couple of months, primarily as a reassurance of physical capability. When not solitary, sex with a partner was usually a same-sex act, for which there is considerable evidence despite much postwar denial.

A central emphasis of the book is on the women themselves, who were initially selected at Ravensbrück among prostitutes with at least three citations from the health authorities. But by mid-1943, the roster was expanded to include women who had had sex with foreigners, asocials, or criminals. Sommer provides extensive statistical material, having found data on 183 women. Their average age was in the low twenties, and they were required to service between seven and fifteen men daily. Sommer also surpasses earlier works in the number of interviews he has pursued; these provide fascinating insights, though he repeatedly cautions against fictitious or mendacious accounts.

There was no privacy in the Puff, and the SS generally placed peepholes in the doors in order to ensure that only the missionary position was used for sex, as well as for their own amusement. Condoms were not used (unlike in military brothels), and if a woman became pregnant, she was forced to have an abortion and return to work within five weeks. Most German women were sterilized before arrival, however. They were isolated from the rest of the camp and...