Exhibition exposes sex slavery at Nazi camps
They told us we were in the camp brothel, that we were the lucky ones. We would eat well and have enough to drink. If we behaved and fulfilled our duties nothing would happen to us."
So begins the wrenching account of Frau W., a prisoner of the Nazi concentration camp Ravensbrueck north of Berlin who between mid-1943 and December 1944 was forced to work as a sex slave for her fellow detainees.
Her story forms the centrepiece of a new exhibition at Ravensbrueck about the fate of women pressed into prostitution between 1942 and 1945, like Asia's "comfort women" during World War II.
But rather than servicing soldiers, the camp prostitutes were the brainchild of SS chief Heinrich Himmler to increase productivity among forced labourers and try to keep homosexuality from "breaking out" among their ranks.
Their numbers were far smaller than the tens of thousands of "comfort women" kidnapped across Asia to serve Japanese troops.
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So begins the wrenching account of Frau W., a prisoner of the Nazi concentration camp Ravensbrueck north of Berlin who between mid-1943 and December 1944 was forced to work as a sex slave for her fellow detainees.
Her story forms the centrepiece of a new exhibition at Ravensbrueck about the fate of women pressed into prostitution between 1942 and 1945, like Asia's "comfort women" during World War II.
But rather than servicing soldiers, the camp prostitutes were the brainchild of SS chief Heinrich Himmler to increase productivity among forced labourers and try to keep homosexuality from "breaking out" among their ranks.
Their numbers were far smaller than the tens of thousands of "comfort women" kidnapped across Asia to serve Japanese troops.