Special Exhibition

You will find the interventions at the end of the permanent exhibition "Forced Labour in the Daily Round 1938-1945" in Barrack 2.

MISSING FEMALE STORIES

Artistic search for traces of the "brothel barrack" (1943-1945) in Königsheide. Berlin-Treptow

29 November 2024 - 4 April 2025

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 Dr 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 topic is virtually absent from the memory of Nazi forced labour. And there are no traces in the Königsheide either.