CRSV: Sexual Slavery in German Military Brothels during WWII
This case note documents the occurrence of sexual violence in violent conflict. It contains explicit mentions of different forms of sexual assault. Reader discretion is advised.
Background of the Conflict
During World War II, Nazi Germany set up a series of military brothels across the parts of Europe it occupied, intended for the use of Wehrmacht and SS Soldiers (Herbermann et al., 2000). During the Second World War, several sovereign countries in Europe were entirely or partly militarily or civil occupied by the military forces and the government of Nazi Germany between 1939 and 1945. Aside from this, Germany also operated thousands of concentration camps across the countries it occupied in Europe. These territories became the sites of several forms of violence, including forced slavery and sexual violence targeting women.
Prevalence of Sexual Violence
The brothels were either created afresh, or expanded versions of previously existing ones, and numbered up to around 500 until 1942, across all of German-occupied Europe (Sander & Johr, 2005). It served travelling soldiers and those who had returned from the front (Yudkin, 1993; Lenten, 2000). Over time, as many as 34,140 European women were forced into sexual slavery during the German occupation, along with female prisoners of brothels within concentration camps (Herbermann et al., 2000). Many of these women and girls were kidnapped or arrested during police roundups and then subject to sexual slavery (Yudkin, 1993; Lenten, 2000; Gmyz, 2007). The very acts of establishing and running these brothels points to forced slavery, and these spaces were also environments where women were subject to a range of different forms of sexual assault and violence.
Kidnapping raids were conducted to capture young women, as young as 15, for sexual slavery at the brothels (Gmyz, 2007). Some of the abducted girls were also sexually exploited by German men, who didn’t serve in the military (Gmyz, 2007). The women lived in brutal conditions within these brothels, being subject to rape and sexual assault – by up to 32 men a day. Each visiting soldier was allotted 15 minutes at a “nominal cost” (Gmyz, 2007) and women who got pregnant were released – but could not return to their families because of the social stigma.
Basis for the use of Sexual Violence
The establishment and operation of brothels was deemed acceptable as a form of sexual slavery. despite claims of “Aryan moral strength and purity” among the Nazi soldiers as a “sexual outlet.” It was considered an appropriate alternative to having sexual relations with local foreigners and labourers. It was also a form of intimidation and humiliation, especially when female prisoners were targeted in concentration camps, and as a form of exercising control when women in occupied territories were targeted.
Notes
Herbermann, N., Baer, H., & Baer, E.R. (2000). The Blessed Abyss: Inmate #6582 in Ravensbruck Concentration Camp for Women. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.
Sander, H., & Johr, B. (2005). Befreier und Befreite - Krieg - Vergewaltigung – Kinder. Frankfurt am Main.
Yudkin, L. (1993). "Narrative Perspectives on Holocaust Literature". In Leon Yudkin (ed.). Hebrew Literature in the Wake of the Holocaust. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
Lenten, R. (2000). Israel and the Daughters of the Shoah: Reoccupying the Territories of Silence. Berghahn Books.
Gmyz C. (2007), "Seksualne Niewolnice III Rzeszy". www.wprost.pl/ar/105285/Seksualne-niewolnice-III-Rzeszy/
