An exhibition in the Ravensbrueck concentration camp is telling an old story for one of the very first times.
“They told us we were in the camp brothel, that we were the lucky ones,” begins the wrenching account of Frau W., a prisoner of the Nazi concentration camp Ravensbrueck north of Berlin. “We would eat well and have enough to drink. If we behaved and fulfilled our duties nothing would happen to us."
Between mid-1943 and December 1944, Frau W. was forced to work as a sex slave for her fellow detainees.
Her story forms the centrepiece of a new exhibition at Ravensbrueck about the fate of women pressed into prostitution between 1942 and 1945, a fate comparable to Asia's "comfort women" during World War II.
But rather than servicing soldiers, the camp prostitutes were the brainchild of SS chief Heinrich Himmler to increase productivity among forced labourers and to try to keep homosexuality from "breaking out" among their ranks.
Their numbers were far smaller than the tens of thousands of "comfort women" kidnapped across Asia to serve Japanese troops.
But Ravensbrueck centre director Insa Eschebach said that at least 200 women, predominantly German, were enslaved by the Nazis. They also endured paralysing trauma, shame and scorn and were, until now, largely a taboo chapter of European history.
Clay figures depicting scenes of daily life in the Ravensbrueck concentration camp are on display at the camp's memorial centre in Fuerstenberg February 24, 2009. The "Sex Slavery in Nazi Concentration Camps" exhibition which opened at the Ravensbrueck concentration camp memorial, sheds light on the fate of women prisoners, many of which came from the Ravensbrueck camp, forced to provide sex to inmates in other concentration camps.
Most of the sex workers were taken from the women's camps at Ravensbrueck and Auschwitz to brothels at 10 camps in Germany and the Nazi-occupied eastern territories.
The vast majority were imprisoned for "anti-social" behaviour -- a crime arbitrarily defined under Hitler to include prostitutes but also women with suspect political ties or relationships with Jews.
Prisoners who had a privileged place in the camp hierarchy could "buy" up to a quarter of an hour with a prostitute for two Reichsmarks from the pittance they earned in the Nazi-run factories. Exhibition curator Michael Sommer estimates that these “privileged” men amounted to about one percent of the forced labourers.
A fraction of the amount charged was credited to women's camp accounts, which they could then use to buy food when it was available.
Some men just wanted to talk
"The sex work was organised very bureaucratically," said Sommer, showing prisoner files with the code 998 signifying a prostitute and vouchers used by men allowed to visit the camp brothel.
No Jews worked at the brothels or were allowed to patronise them and separate facilities were created for camp guards.
Prostitutes were regularly tested for sexually transmitted diseases to avoid outbreaks at the camps. Pregnancies ended in forced abortions.
"The irony was that while the Nazis tried to regulate prostitution in German cities, they institutionalised it at the camps," Sommer said.
Some women "volunteered" for service in the brothels, which were heated and had slightly better hygienic conditions, after being promised early release from the degrading and life-threatening conditions of the camps.
Others only learned of their fate when the first patrons were ushered in.
Photographs of prisoners murdered at the Ravensbrueck concentration camp for women line a wall in the "Place of Names" memorial at the camp in Fuerstenberg February 24, 2009. The "Sex Slavery in Nazi Concentration Camps" exhibition which opened at the Ravensbrueck concentration camp memorial, sheds light on the fate of women prisoners, many of which came from the Ravensbrueck camp, forced to provide sex to inmates in other concentration camps
Another woman whose testimony is featured in the exhibition, identified only as Frau B., said each woman worked in a small room where she received up to 10 men in two hours.
"There was a spy hole and sometimes the guards would peek in and sneer," she said. "But you know, we were so numb that we just thought, 'Get stuffed, you bastards.'"
Although the months in the brothel left her permanently scarred, Frau B. said the men who visited her were "decent" by and large.
"They had also been locked up for years and were happy to have human contact," she said. Sometimes, the men just wanted to talk.
Many political prisoners boycotted the brothels. Communists at Buchenwald were convinced the SS would use the bordellos to spy on prisoners.
Although nearly all the sex workers survived until the camps' liberation, there is scant evidence that anybody was released for service rendered.
After the war, most of the German sex workers kept their trauma silent out of shame, while foreign victims feared being seen as "collaborators."
None received recognition from the German state as victims of sex slavery or compensation for their ordeal. Few, if any, are still alive today.
Eschebach noted that sex slavery has only been recognised as a war crime under international law since 2002 and said the more recent occurrences of mass rape in Bosnia and Rwanda, as well as the demands of "comfort women" for justice, has prompted more research in Germany.
The exhibition can be seen at Ravensbrueck until March 8 and will make three more stops in Germany before opening in Rome in 2010.
Deborah Cole/AFP/Expatica
Text size
While the Nazis strove to suppress prostitution in German cities, they attempted to institutionalize it in concentration camps. A new exhibition sheds light on this taboo chapter of history.
Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook
Google+
0
