Concentration Camp Brothels -- ?!
Prisoner at War
themes, today's NYT states that the infamous Block 24 brothel at
Auschwitz is almost certainly a myth.
PBS' website on Auschwitz still believes otherwise, however. But
what's really surprising is the claim that the brothel was for "hard-
working prisoners" -- and from non other than Himmler himself!!
Were there any brothels in any death camps?? Were any ever for the
prisoners?? Etc.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/world/middleeast/06stalags.html?ref=world
Dave Wilma
> In an article on "stalags," Israeli pocketbook pornography with Nazi
> themes, today's NYT states that the infamous Block 24 brothel at
> Auschwitz is almost certainly a myth.
>
> prisoners?? Etc.
In the documentary series Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State (BBC 2005)
Block 24 is mentioned. A Polish ex-prisoner admits in an on-camera
interview visiting twice in reward for his service in the fire
brigade. Block 24 was at the main camp, the old Polish cavalry
barracks, and not at Birkenau where the cremetoria operated.
Louis C
> In an article on "stalags," Israeli pocketbook pornography with Nazi
> themes, today's NYT states that the infamous Block 24 brothel at
> Auschwitz is almost certainly a myth.
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/world/middleeast/06stalags.html?ref...
Actually, it doesn't.
>From the link you supplied, the quote is: "One of K. Tzetnik's biggest
literary successes, "Doll's House," published in 1953, told the story
of a character purporting to be the author's sister, serving the SS as
a sex slave in Block 24, the notorious Pleasure Block in Auschwitz.
Though a Holocaust classic, many scholars now describe it as
pornographic and likely made up."
What is "pornographic and likely made up" is the plot of Doll's House,
not the existence of Block 24.
Note the addition at the end of the article:
"The Jerusalem Journal article yesterday, about the pornographic
pocket books with Nazi themes that were circulated in Israel in the
1960s, misquoted Na'ama Shik, a researcher at Yad Vashem, The
Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, regarding the
pocket book "Doll's House," about a Jewish woman serving in a
notorious brothel called Block 24 in Auschwitz. She said the book -
not Block 24 - was fictional."
LC
Andrew Clark
> In an article on "stalags," Israeli pocketbook pornography with Nazi
> themes, today's NYT states that the infamous Block 24 brothel at
> Auschwitz is almost certainly a myth.
Than the New York Times is wrong. There is good evidence that it did exist,
although not in the form described in various fictional accounts.
> PBS' website on Auschwitz still believes otherwise, however. But
> what's really surprising is the claim that the brothel was for "hard-
> working prisoners" -- and from non other than Himmler himself!!
There were many categories of prisoner in German work camps like Auschwitz
III or the scores of other sub-camps - Jews and SS concentration camp
inmates at the bottom right up to volunteer foreign workers and well paid
skilled craftsmen. Brothels were routinely established for use by workmen of
most of these categories, and also by the German SS guards and even
Wehrmacht troops on leave. Copies of warrants issued by Wehrmacht divisions
for troops to travel to and use brothels in SS camps are commonplace in the
German official archives.
> Were there any brothels in any death camps??
There were only a very few 'death camps' in the sense of camps set up solely
and specifically for the most efficient mass murder possible; they were
small places which only had a relatively short existence. Most of what are
commonly called 'death camps' were actually work camps or simple prisons.
euno...@yahoo.com.au
> In an article on "stalags," Israeli pocketbook pornography with Nazi
> themes, today's NYT states that the infamous Block 24 brothel at
> Auschwitz is almost certainly a myth.
Could anyone seriously immagine the Nazies, with a belief in racial
purity, their emphasis on increasing the Aryan/Northern European
population and the redirection of religious dedication into racial
dedication would undermine all of this core ideology, propaganda and
any German or SS members belief by having them have intercourse with
people that to a significant part would have been obviously Jews or
were communists. The act of sexual intercourse naturally leads to
affinity and intimacy whereas the propaganda of the day would have
created a sense of revulsion at inter-racial intercourse.
Possibly brothels could have been setup by the inmates or created to
control the inmates or there may have been acts of prostitution which
is likely considering the extreme circumstances and situations people
found themselves in.
Likely to be just propaganda. Every war has this.
>
> PBS' website on Auschwitz still believes otherwise, however. But
> what's really surprising is the claim that the brothel was for "hard-
> working prisoners" -- and from non other than Himmler himself!!
>
> Were there any brothels in any death camps?? Were any ever for the
> prisoners?? Etc.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/world/middleeast/06stalags.html?ref...
>
> http://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/about/transcripts_4.html
Brad Meyer
>On Sep 7, 7:05 am, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> In an article on "stalags," Israeli pocketbook pornography with Nazi
>> themes, today's NYT states that the infamous Block 24 brothel at
>> Auschwitz is almost certainly a myth.
>
>Could anyone seriously immagine the Nazies, with a belief in racial
>purity, their emphasis on increasing the Aryan/Northern European
>population and the redirection of religious dedication into racial
>dedication would undermine all of this core ideology, propaganda and
>any German or SS members belief by having them have intercourse with
>people that to a significant part would have been obviously Jews or
>were communists.
Yes. It is the same as asking could anyone seriously imagine a
southern plantation owner, with his belief in racial superiority and
and racial purity, going down to the slave quaters to knock off some
"colored poontang"? Sexual abuse of females by masters is pretty
common in any setup involving slaves. I, for one, would have been more
surprised had there _not_ been that sort of thing not going on.
Michele
news:1189168093....@57g2000hsv.googlegroups.com...
> Could anyone seriously immagine
First, there is no need to imagine and to invoke war propaganda (an often
resorted-to emergency exit, it seems, when it comes to uncomfortable
truths). It is a widely known and accepted fact. If any reputable historian
ever wrote and documented that the military and concentration camp brothels
were a figment of war propaganda, I'd like to see a cite. I doubt I'll see
it.
the Nazies, with a belief in racial
> purity, their emphasis on increasing the Aryan/Northern European
> population and the redirection of religious dedication into racial
> dedication would undermine all of this core ideology, propaganda and
> any German or SS members belief by having them have intercourse with
> people that to a significant part would have been obviously Jews or
> were communists.
The point of all of that was having a "pure" (for simplicity's sake, assume
"" are used in this paragraph wherever needed in order not to turn this into
a straight-faced racial rant), strong and numerous German race. Having the
pure German males, serving at the front, saving up for the pure German
females back home would have required frequent leaves for the males. This
was unpractical. Given the realities of human reproduction, a pure German
male can very well provide biological material for the pure German race on
the rare occasions when he's home on leave, and at the same time relieve
himself more often with other than pure German females. The only caveat is
preventing any births being the outcome of this relief - which is what any
brothel will take care of, all the more so a divisional or concentration
camp brothel.
The act of sexual intercourse naturally leads to
> affinity and intimacy
Sure! That's why the Pretty Woman plot is the rule and not the exception in
real life; most clients marry the prostitutes. That's why so many German
women, raped in 1945, fell in love with those nice men.
>
> Likely to be just propaganda. Every war has this.
Every war also has tons of paperwork by the armies involved. And the Germans
were particularly candid in theirs. The German ones are still kept at the
Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg. As pointed out years ago by another
user of this newsgroup, the 12. Infanterie Division in January 1942
kidnapped 219 women from villages in its area and detained them in its
divisional brothel, save 20 of them who were too old (around 80 years of
age) and "died in transit". 195 other women, and that includes
13-years-olds, stayed in the brothel, available for the division's soldiers.
4 were pregnant and were sent to the hospital. As soon as their baby was
born, he was killed, so that the 4 women could then be sent to the brothel
too.
That's black on white in the divisional records, in the aforementioned
archive.
Sure there's war propaganda; there also are lots of uncomfortable facts,
when it comes to those sleek Nazis.
As a side note, the Japanese were also ferociously sure of their racial
superiority when it came to Chinese, Korean or Indochinese women. I suppose
you'll happily believe that the "comfort women" brothels also were just
enemy war propaganda.
Cubdriver
>Could anyone seriously immagine the Nazies, with a belief in racial
>purity, their emphasis on increasing the Aryan/Northern European
>population and the redirection of religious dedication into racial
>dedication would undermine all of this core ideology, propaganda and
>any German or SS members belief by having them have intercourse with
>people that to a significant part would have been obviously Jews or
>were communists.
Yes.
>The act of sexual intercourse naturally leads to
>affinity and intimacy whereas the propaganda of the day would have
>created a sense of revulsion at inter-racial intercourse.
Rape is sexual intercourse and rarely leads to the result you posit. I
suspect the same is true of most brothel encounters.
Blue skies! -- Dan Ford
Claire Chennault and His American Volunteers, 1941-1942
new from HarperCollins www.FlyingTigersBook.com
Prisoner at War
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/09/18/dachau.drawings.ap/index.html
Not necessarily an official brothel, but the drawing (by a Polish
Catholic at Dachau) referred to shows that prostitutes were certainly
about.
Then again, couldn't it simply have been a soldier's girlfriend...?
On Sep 6, 4:05 pm, Prisoner at War <prisoner_at_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> In an article on "stalags," Israeli pocketbook pornography with Nazi
> themes, today's NYT states that the infamous Block 24 brothel at
> Auschwitz is almost certainly a myth.
>
> PBS' website on Auschwitz still believes otherwise, however. But
> what's really surprising is the claim that the brothel was for "hard-
> working prisoners" -- and from non other than Himmler himself!!
>
> Were there any brothels in any death camps?? Were any ever for the
> prisoners?? Etc.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/world/middleeast/06stalags.html?ref...
>
> http://www.pbs.org/auschwitz/about/transcripts_4.html
Marvin
Museum (http://www.ushmm.org/) for "brothel" turned up only
one document where the occurs, in the general sense of a bad
place for a woman to be.
Andrew Clark
> A search of the Web Site of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
> (http://www.ushmm.org/) for "brothel" turned up only one document where
> the occurs, in the general sense of a bad place for a woman to be.
That's because the USHMM has an entirely accurate policy of distinguishing
between a brothel, which is at least notionally a place where women
voluntarily working as prostitutes voluntarily gather to conduct business,
and the mass rape of captive or coerced women which occurred in the camps.
Brothel is entirely the wrong word for the locations in the camps where this
happened, and the USHMM reflect that. They are particularly keen to do so
because of the common neo-Nazi lie that the hundreds of thousands of women
raped in the camps (and elsewhere) were voluntarily acting as prostitutes.
Marvin
<snip>
> That's because the USHMM has an entirely accurate policy of distinguishing
> between a brothel, which is at least notionally a place where women
> voluntarily working as prostitutes voluntarily gather to conduct business,
> and the mass rape of captive or coerced women which occurred in the camps.
>
> Brothel is entirely the wrong word for the locations in the camps where this
> happened, and the USHMM reflect that. They are particularly keen to do so
> because of the common neo-Nazi lie that the hundreds of thousands of women
> raped in the camps (and elsewhere) were voluntarily acting as prostitutes.
>
rape.