Robert Sommer

Lecturer, DePaul University College of Law, Chicago

Lagerbordelle. Sex-Zwangsarbeit in nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern

Chair: Veronika Springmann, Berlin

Online via Zoom
Please register here to join the conversation.

On Heinrich Himmler’s orders, brothels were set up for prisoners in ten of the largest Nazi concentration camps starting in 1942 – such as in Dachau, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen. The brothel visit was intended to be an incentive to increase the productivity of the male slave laborers in the camps. The SS recruited female prisoners from Ravensbrück and Auschwitz-Birkenau for these brothels – usually with false promises or under force. In this lecture, Robert Sommer gives an overview of the history of the camp brothels. The main focus is on the victims: Who were those women? What were the living conditions in the brothels and how good were their chances of survival? Sommer also talks about the organization of the brothel business or the motives of brothel visitors. For a long time, this subject was taboo. Based on ten years of research, the Berlin historian draws a picture of a previously unknown reality of horror: the sexual exploitation of women in Nazi concentration camps.

Robert Sommer is a Berlin historian and cultural studies scholar. He received his Ph.D. from the Humboldt University of Berlin in 2009. His research focuses on sexuality and sexual exploitation in Nazi concentration camps as well as prostitution politics in the “Third Reich”. He has worked as a research associate for the concentration camp memorials of Ravensbrück and Flossenbürg and for various documentaries, such as the BBC documentary Auschwitz. The Nazis and the “Final Solution”. He is the author of Das KZ-Bordell. Sexuelle Zwangsarbeit in nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern [The Camp Brothel: Forced Sexual Labor in National Socialist concentration camps] (Paderborn 2009). Sommer teaches at various universities, such as DePaulUniversity in Chicago and Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Dr Veronika Springmann works at the Friedrich Meineke Institute of History at the Free University of Berlin.

This event is held in German.