Exhibition on Sex Slavery Under the Nazis to Open in Germany

[Aptrgangr]

An exhibition on sexual slavery under the Nazis will open Sunday at the former Ravensbrück concentration camp, organizers said.
The Foundation of Brandenburg Memorials, which operates museums at the former camps, said in a statement Thursday that the forced prostitution system in the camps was a "little known phenomenon."
"The female prisoners who were forced to do sex work remained silent after 1945 about their experiences as well as about the brothel users -- male, and above all German, prisoners who were allowed by the SS to visit the brothels under a rewards system," the foundation said.
"Forced Sex Work in Nazi Concentration Camps" covers a system that ran in 10 camps between 1942 and 1945. Most of the women involved were prisoners at Ravensbrück, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of Berlin.
Male prisoners were allowed visits to the sex slaves to boost their productivity in the Nazi arms factories during World War II.
The foundation said that encouraging sex with women was also a means of curbing homosexuality, which the Nazis feared would "break out" among male prisoners confined to their own camps.

Trauma and shame
Women who were held at the brothels often suffered enduring psychological trauma and many did not apply for reparations after their liberation in 1945 due to the shame they felt.
Forced prostitution in concentration camps was the subject of an exhibition in Vienna in 2005.
The new exhibit at Ravensbrück, which runs until Sept. 30, incorporates filmed interviews with survivors as well as photographs and documents.
Some 132,000 women and children, 20,000 men and 1,000 adolescent girls from about 40 countries were held at Ravensbrück and the youth concentration camp Uckermark between 1939 and 1945.
An estimated 40,000 of those prisoners were killed or died of mistreatment and disease during that period.

Exhibition on Sex Slavery Under the Nazis to Open in Germany | Culture & Lifestyle | Deutsche Welle | 14.01.2007

[Errigal]

There will be a lot of very strange little men who will go and see this exhibition.

[Menydh]

I've followed a link to a website on Ravensbrück camp. I'm wondering about this picture and its caption:

Befreit. Im April 1945 evakuiert das Rote Kreuz rund 7.500 Frauen aus Ravensbrück

What I translate here is: "Liberated. On April 1945, the Red Cross evacuated around 7,500 women from Ravensbrück"

Looking at the faces, it doesn't look to me as if those girls would have gone through the ordeal of years of forced sex slavery. I mean, think of the scars that the trauma would have left on them.

I just wondered because the article makes it sound like a mass forced prostitution factory which, with the evidence presented, it looks quite an exageration of whatever it may have happened there.

[Eurovox]

Brilliant analysis Mynydd. The Holocaust story promoters should be more wise when it cames to choose pictures .

[Susi]

Originally Posted by Mynydd

"Extra rations today, girls!"