By Rainer Sousa
At the height of Nazism, several scientific studies were encouraged in order to prove the superiority of the Aryan race over other peoples on the planet. The recognition of the characteristics and potential of the body was one of the fields in which Nazism tried to logically support its theories. In this regard, we know that all this interest ended up producing mistaken theories that were not restricted only to the German people.
During the Second World War, Heinrich Himmler, the most important security chief of the Nazi State, encouraged the creation of brothels inside the concentration camps. Through sexual exploitation, the Nazi leader created a bonus system that provided the company of prostitutes to incarcerated men. According to Himmler himself, the sexual act would have an enormous capacity to invigorate the worker and increase his productivity.
In order to create these brothels in the concentration camps, SS members worked with several foreign women accused of turning against the Nazi regime. Among those recruited were also Germans considered “antisocial”, such as unemployed, beggars and alcoholics. The initial promise was that they would undergo sex work for just six months and then be released. However, once co-opted, they would stay there much longer than agreed.
According to researcher Robert Sommer, the bet on brothels began in the Mauthausen concentration camp in 1942. In a short time it also extended to the camps located in Dachau, Sachsenhausen , Ravensbrueck, Buchenwald and Auschwitz. Still in 1945, the year in which the Germans no longer had any military reaction power, a last brothel was created in Mittelbau-Dora, where a V2 rocket manufacturing center was located.
Despite being active, Nazi brothels were subject to a strict process of control and use. SS guards, Russian POWs and Jews could not enjoy sex workers under any circumstances. Furthermore, the expatriate worker who had this right could only have the company of a prostitute who was of the same nationality. Indeed, we can see that the ideas of purity and racial segregation also extended to this disgraceful practice of the Nazis.