Missing Female Stories

Vernissage

Abbildung: »Missing Female Stories«, Birgit Szepanski, Ausstellungsansicht im CLB Berlin, 2022, Foto: Moritz Vietze

In 1943, the German Labour Front (DAF) set up a so-called 'brothel barrack' in the Königsheide forest in the Berlin district of Treptow. Foreign women were forced into prostitution here. In this way, the National Socialists wanted to avoid sexual contact between foreign forced labourers or prisoners of war and German women.

In her installation, artist Birgit Szepanski addresses a gap in the culture of remembrance. The women who were forced to perform sex work remained silent about their experiences after the war. When other contemporary witnesses spoke about the 'B-Barrack', they often insinuated that the women had worked in the brothel voluntarily. The subject is virtually absent from the memory of Nazi forced labour and there are no traces of it in Königsheide either.

Next date:

• Date Thursday, 28/November/2024 19:00
• Venue Dokumentationszentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit Berlin-Schöneweide
• Address Britzer Straße 5, 12439 Berlin-Köpenick