Camp brothels, i.e., prisoner brothels in National Socialist concentration camps, have for decades been a blank in the historiography of the system of concentration camps. The SS functioned as procurer of the camp brothels. The National Socialist state as brothel-keeper supported prostitution under the exertion of pressure. In the context ...
(Show more)Camp brothels, i.e., prisoner brothels in National Socialist concentration camps, have for decades been a blank in the historiography of the system of concentration camps. The SS functioned as procurer of the camp brothels. The National Socialist state as brothel-keeper supported prostitution under the exertion of pressure. In the context of “racial general prevention”, sexuality (including prostitution) had become a highly ideologised area of life in National Socialism. However, after the liberation, writing about and speaking of the camp brothels became a taboo for the survivors as well as for historians in both German post-war societies.
The “Sonderbauten” (“special buildings”), as the camp brothels were called in the SS jargon, were pulled down one after the other so that the places where prostitution had taken place became unrecognisable – like a material realisation of the taboo. In the first reports written by survivors after 1945, the existence of camp brothels had openly been described as part of the system of concentration camps. Those reports usually documented all experiences and observations in order to reveal the whole scale [= Bandbreite, alt. extent = Ausmaß] of persecution, humiliation and extermination. However, especially in legal proceedings and with regard to applications for acknowledgement as victims of persecution, the women were considerably degraded. The desexualisation of [‘woman’ as] wife and mother that was connected with a general social ostracism of prostitution, and not least the reduction of women to housework and family that was dominant in the Adenauer era contributed to the tabooing of the experiences of the women. The women concerned were not given any chance to come to terms with their experiences; they were left alone with them. We thus have to speak of a continual persecution until the end of their lives.
It was due to a number of reasons that the concentration camp brothels became a subject of research only in the beginning of the 1990s: 1) the existence of a widespread and continual taboo that prevented prosecution of as well as historical research on the crimes, 2) the fact that the topic was approached by men – jurists and survivors – who hardly ever put themselves in the place of the women and, last but not least, 3) the shame of the women who had been forced to sell their bodies und to live with a continual tabooing after their liberation. It was only after women’s studies had developed new perspectives on the history of sexual repression of women and after a reorientation of research on National Socialism that it became possible to make forced prostitution in concentration camps a topic of historiographical research.
In oral history projects such as those carried out in the late 1980s and early 1990s by the Concentration Camp Memorial Neuengamme in Hamburg, former forced prostitutes were among the witnesses who were interviewed. However, their testimonies are now kept under lock and key.
The taboo that makes it so difficult to deal with the topic of camp brothels is an expression of the problems that both German post-war states had in dealing with prostitution and especially of the domination of male voices in the discourse on prostitution. The early testimonies of concentration camp survivors were neither pursued further legally nor scientifically. The witnesses themselves have also contributed to the taboo to the present day. They often only speak about the camp brothels after insisting questions, and not unusually with disparaging judgements. It was only female historians who approached the topic only if they listened carefully to the witnesses.
(Show less)