DS036 Honoring the women of the Sachsenhausen brothel (english)
Kelsey interviews Tom Mustroph who, along with partner Barbara Gstaltmayr, is working to create a memorial honoring the women who were forced to work at the Sachsenhausen brothel. The working title of the project is:
“Gedenken für die Frauen, die im Lagerbordell des KZ Sachsenhausen zur Prostition gezwungen wurden”
In english this translates to:
»In remembrance of the women who were forced into prostitution in the camp brothel of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp«
This memorial will be at the site of the former site of the brothel. The creative direction is led by the artist Monica Bonvicini with students of Universität der Künste Berlin (Berlin University of the Arts). This project is also in collaboration with the historian Robert Sommer.
Visiting Sachsenhausen, the brothel is not mentioned on the visitors guide map but you can find this site behind the pathology lab building. There you can see the metal frame outline of the former brothel, filled with large gravel. The title on the frame says, “sonderbau” or “special building”, which was the official Nazi label for the brothel. We look forward to hearing more about this memorial project when it is created and installed in the future.
If you’d like to know more about the brothel at Sachsenhausen, who was there, how it worked and how it was a part of the Nazi system, go to Episode 35 [https://sachsenhausen-stuff.com/ds035-forced-prostitution-in-concentration-camps-englisch/] to hear the interview with Robert Sommer who has beautifully researched and published a book on the topic and is collaborating with Tom and Barbara on the memorial.
[https://sachsenhausen-stuff.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/image-1024x683.jpeg]Commemoration ceremony honoring the women who were forced to work at the Sachsenhausen brothel. This event took place during the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Sachsenhausen. Photo credit: Karsten Schirmer, for the Sachsenhausen Memorial, May, 2026.
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Descendants Stuff podcast is produced by Jakob Feisthauer, Kelsey Snook and Nicole Wines – three descendants of Sachsenhausen prisoners and co-creators of the Sachsenhausen Stuff [https://sachsenhausen-stuff.com/] project.
The Descendants Stuff team would like to extend a special thank you to the team at the Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum [https://www.sachsenhausen-sbg.de/en/] especially Dr. Astrid Ley, and the members of the educational department’s project “What Voice Do We Have?”, as well as the descendant’s collective, Voices of the Next Generation [http://voices-of-the-next-generations.org/].
Our theme music, “Heil, Sachsenhausen!” was written and performed by former Sachsenhausen prisoner Aleksander Kulisiewicz. Thanks to the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum [https://www.ushmm.org/] and the Aleksander Kulisiewicz collection [https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn546848] for granting permission for its use. If you are a Sachsenhausen descendant who would like to share your story, please contact us [https://sachsenhausen-stuff.com/contact/].
