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Das KZ-Bordell: Sexuelle Zwangsarbeit in nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslagern. By Robert Sommer. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2009. Pp. 415. Cloth E38.00. ISBN 978-3506765246.
This comprehensive survey of the bizarre phenomenon of concentration camp brothels is written with much sympathy for the employed prisoners: "sexual forced laborers" (Sex-Zwangsarbeiterinnen) (22) who were excluded, as "prostitutes," from the type of compensation granted to many other victims of Nazi persecution after the war. Robert Sommer punctures many myths. For example, he rejects the assumption that SS men had their own brothels in their training camps, and deplores the long-lived and false depiction in the popular media of the rape of Jewish women in SS brothels. Instead, Sommer thinks that the SS men stationed at Dachau simply drove into Munich for sex, though other research indicates that they also found willing partners at local dance halls in Dachau itself (Geoffrey J. Giles, "The Denial of Homosexuality: Same-Sex Incidents in Himmler's SS and Police," in Sexuality and German Fascism, Dagmar Herzog, ed. [New York: Berghahn, 2005], 279). Several camps did have brothels with Polish sex workers for the Ukrainian guards, but not for the German SS men. There were also brothels for some inmates in ten camps. Himmler, who was impressed with...