These photos document brothel activity for soldiers in German-occupied France during World War II. The Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive) has classified them under Frankreich, Brest, Soldatenbordell. I’m interested in what commercial sex looks like, not in its reductionist meaning of money exchanged for ‘sex acts’ but the whole social context. That means the male bonding, the drinking and laughing and flirting and showing off, and the activities of those employed as providers and enhancers of this male sociality.
Source Deutsches Bundesarchiv. Individual photo captions here, with the following caveat:
For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Factual corrections and alternative descriptions are encouraged separately from the original description. Additionally errors can be reported at this page to inform the Bundesarchiv.
In the last photo, there are stars of David on the wall, which leads me to speculatively assume that the soldiers’ brothel is located in a former Jewish establishment. If so, the symbolism is rather intriguing.
Translation on the German writings in the pictures would be highly beneficial to those of us who do not speak German. I feel that the pictures would be better understood if an English translation allowed viewers to read what the signs say.
Pic 1:
Open from 10 am to 9 pm
Every German soldier has to leave the house at 9 pm.
[signed:] local mil. governor
Pic 5:
Every soldier is strongly
obliged to use freely distributed
condoms
The history of women in military or concentration camp brothels in and outside of Germany is not yet resolved and fully written. Some may were foreigners enslaved sex work force to please soldiers. Others may were travelling working girls criminalized as anti social (cf. ASBOS) and imprisoned into KZs were they also had to serve other imprisoned workers within the camp hierarchy. So nobody has yet fully researched how many independent sex workers were fined because of illegal soliciting and therefore became imprisoned nazi-government prostitutes.
None by the nazi state forced sex worker has yet received any apology or even compensation as the Jews, homosexuals, Romany people … have.
Shame around sex work and the whore stigma is still a insurmountable high barrier and sex worker movement is still not strong enough to fight for all their ancestors.
More info in German:
http://www.sexworker.at/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=37605#37605