The Most Cruel “Game” of the N4ZIS? What Happened Behind the Camp Walls Still Shocks the World Today

Between 1944 and 1945, more than 100 National Socialist concentration camps were established across Europe. They became sites for the most heinous forms of torture, murder, brutality, inhumane conditions, harassment, forced labor, child abuse, and cruel scientific experiments. However, there were also other, hidden aspects that played only a minor role in post-war headlines. The camps were inhabited by Nazi personnel who were treated as human beings and therefore enjoyed entertainment and worldly pleasures.

Sadism, sports, and sexual practices were essential elements in the daily lives of the Nazi guards and soldiers. They also organized athletic competitions, banquets, and social events, even while their victims were dying just meters away. These activities, disguised as normality, demonstrated a level of perversion that surpassed physical brutality and reinforced the moral and psychological detachment of the perpetrators from their horrifying environment.

Living Hell: Some Suffer, Others Enjoy

Concentration camps were created to eliminate any kind of threat to Adolf Hitler’s plan. It did not matter whether it was an internal or external threat, political opponents, sexual and ethnic minorities, alleged social outcasts, or sexual and religious dissidents—absolutely everyone ended up in the camps, where horror and torture reigned. The Nazi leadership claimed it was a rehabilitation process, using this motto to justify mistreatment that was nothing more than a method to break the moral resistance of those who, in their view, held wrong thoughts and practices. All prisoners were stripped of every trace of identity. They abandoned their human nature and became systematic objects at the service of the fundamental needs of the Nazis. Children and adults were subjected to the worst practices imaginable to a sane mind. The Nazi personnel lost all sensitivity and empathy toward those considered enemies. They made no distinction regarding age, neither for children nor the elderly. They mistreated pregnant women without any mercy. They could do whatever they wanted with them, as their lives were in their hands. Among the most atrocious practices were those associated with entertainment, such as sports.

The Ring of Terror: The Hell of Boxing in the Concentration Camps

Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS and one of the main proponents of the concept of the Final Solution, was convinced that in order to maintain the high morale and interest of the men working in the concentration camps, he had to provide them with entertainment. In various meetings with Adolf Hitler, he expressed the need to allocate a budget for recreational, cultural, and sports activities that would satisfy his men’s hunger for pleasure. One of these spectacles was boxing, a sport that was very popular in Germany at the time. With Hitler’s rise to power, this combat sport became one of the great pillars of propaganda. At the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, German boxers such as Max Schmeling, Herbert Runge, and Willy Kaiser won titles. Due to their athletic successes, they were used by Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, to reinforce his theory of racial superiority. Boxing also served as a tool to channel the violence of Nazi society in a controlled way. Officers and soldiers serving the Third Reich belonged to this society. Therefore, organizing boxing matches after a long workday could be seen as a form of gratitude and recognition.

At the center of the Nazi boxing show was Victor “Young” Perez, a Tunisia-born Jewish boxer who was imprisoned in the Auschwitz-Monowitz camp. In his country, Jews were a heavily persecuted minority and were forbidden to join local sports clubs. In response, Tunisian Jews founded the Makabi Boxing Club, where both Young and his brother Benjamin trained daily. In 1925, at the age of 14, he became a professional boxer. One of his first decisions was to embroider a Star of David on his shorts, a symbol of his Jewish identity. Although he was only 1.55 meters tall and weighed 55 kilograms, he won every fight he contested in North Africa. Young did not have a heavy punch, but he was tireless. That was the secret of his success. After achieving success on his continent, he brought his dreams to France, where he fought the American boxer Frankie Genaro for the world title and emerged victorious. When he returned to Tunisia, the news had already spread. More than 100,000 fans, including Jews and Muslims, cheered for him on the streets.

When World War II broke out, Young Perez was living in Paris. After the German invasion, laws were enacted that isolated Jews from French society, confiscated their property, and forced them to wear a yellow star. Unlike the symbol embroidered on his boxing shorts, Perez refused to wear it. He was betrayed and arrested in September 1943, then taken to the Drancy transit camp in Paris. Shortly thereafter, he was transported by train to Auschwitz-Monowitz. After a few weeks in the camp, several guards recognized him. They had seen him box in his glorious days. Shamelessly, they asked him for a private show where they could repeatedly watch his best punches. Not wanting to waste his talent, they allowed him to train for a few days and even gave him extra food rations so he could recover some of the muscle mass he had lost along with his freedom. After noticing an physical improvement in the athlete, they forced him to fight an SS soldier who was corpulent, weighed about 75 kilos, and was more than 1.80 meters tall. After three rounds, Young Perez won the fight. A few days later, he stepped into the Auschwitz ring against a prisoner named Paul Steinberg. After the initial fights, the guards were fascinated, and boxing became an increasingly frequent spectacle. Young was forced to fight about 140 matches against various prisoners during his 15 months in Auschwitz-Monowitz. Although he often fought opponents much larger and heavier than himself, he was only defeated once. It should be noted that Young Perez’s case was not unique, but most prisoners did not have the energy for sports. They ended the day exhausted from forced labor, so only those who enjoyed certain privileges could be used as living spectacles.

Another Jewish boxer who gained some fame by participating in the Nazi horror show was Tadeusz Pietrzykowski. Born in Warsaw in 1917, he had placed second in the Polish bantamweight championships. Tadeusz was arrested while trying to reach France to join the Polish exile army and was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau as a political prisoner. Between 1941 and 1943, he fought between 40 and 60 matches in the concentration camp. He faced several heavyweight German deportees and defeated his own Kapo, Walter Dünning. Instead of seeking revenge, the latter rewarded him with a piece of bread and some meat. These victories made him the most prominent boxing champion in Auschwitz, applauded at night by the very same Nazis who tortured him during the day.

In the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, the star boxer was Segundo Espel Aras, also known as Paulino. He was a Spanish republican who fought every Sunday at the request of SS commander Franz Ziereis. After dozens of fights, he earned the nickname “the brave and undefeated boxer of Mauthausen,” as no opponent could defeat him, not even the German soldiers who dared to challenge him. Paulino knew, like the other boxers in the concentration camps, that boxing was his only hope for survival. He knew that he probably would not be killed, because otherwise the camp command would lose its show. When some prisoners saw that boxing improved their living conditions, they lied during their initial interrogations, claiming to be boxers. However, the truth quickly came out, as they were often easily defeated by experienced boxers.

Symphonies of Hell: Music and Horror in the Concentration Camps

Adolf Hitler was a music lover, especially of the works of the composer Richard Wagner, who had died 50 years before the Nazi leader’s rise to power in Germany. For decades, the question of the reason for his fascination remained—whether it was due to the composer’s explicit antisemitism or the Germanic sagas he set to music, which Hitler used to consolidate his ideology. Historian James Kennaway describes Wagner’s music as the soundtrack to megalomania. The first orchestras in concentration camps appeared in 1933 at the beginning of Hitler’s rise to power. However, the first connections to the Holocaust emerged in 1939 with the outbreak of the war. Since the invasion of Poland, the Nazis turned to music to drown out the screams and pain of the Jews. On February 1, 1940, Nazi troops confiscated more than 300,000 sacred books associated with Judaism and burned them in a square in front of the Yeshivah. Thousands of Jews gathered around the fire and wept inconsolably. In the middle of this scene, the German army called upon an orchestra that played cheerful music to drown out the screams. Something similar happened in 1941 during the Babi Yar massacre. The Germans rounded up more than 33,000 Jews who were shot over two days. During their execution, waltzes and cheerful tunes by German orchestras could be heard through loudspeakers installed by the SS.

There were six extermination camps in the Holocaust: Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Chelmno. Only the last one had neither orchestras nor choirs made up of prisoners, as it operated as a mobile camp where Jews, mostly from the Lodz ghetto, were killed immediately upon arrival. In the other camps, orchestras often lasted for several months or even a few years. In Treblinka, there were three orchestras, one of them led by Artur Gold, a well-known jazz and tango composer from Poland who had lived in the Warsaw ghetto. The imprisoned musicians wore special suits and played while the soldiers ate, sitting facing the window. In Auschwitz, there were six orchestras and a choir: one orchestra and one choir in Auschwitz I, two orchestras in Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and two orchestras in Auschwitz III-Monowitz. In the first two camps, the musical groups were required to play in the mornings and evenings during the departure and return of the prisoners from forced labor. Unfortunately, they had to play antisemitic marches and songs, as well as pieces by Beethoven, Schubert, Bach, and Wagner. Primo Levi, an Italian Jewish writer, anti-fascist resistance fighter, and Holocaust survivor, reported that this music set the bodies of the prisoners—who generally appeared soulless like robots—in motion simply by hearing it, and that without it, they would have had to endure long hours to return after being exhausted by work.

The orchestras in the camps could consist of non-Jews, but the musicians who played at the entrance to the gas chambers had to be exclusively Jewish. In Majdanek, in August 1943, a truck arrived with 200 Jewish orphans, including infants and children up to 12 years old. Meanwhile, German troops ordered the orchestra to play Yiddish lullabies. Like the boxers in the camps, the musicians received certain advantages over other prisoners. Both Szymon Laks, a surviving French Jew who served as an orchestra conductor in Auschwitz-Birkenau from 1943 to 1944, and the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz led by Alma Rosé mentioned that they fought for better living conditions. They were allowed to rehearse indoors instead of outdoors, were exempt from forced labor, and had short breaks. The musicians slept in pairs, not crammed together like the other prisoners. They had straw sacks, and their bedding was changed every seven days. They also had a weekly shower and a loaf of bread for every four persons. Therefore, of the 40 musicians in the orchestra, 38 survived. However, being a musician did not guarantee survival. In the Janowska camp, an orchestra of top-class artists had been created. In 1943, however, the Nazi authorities decided to kill all Jews, and the musicians were no exception. As for the instruments used, the harmonica was one of the most requested. In fact, guards were even seen playing some tunes. The use of the accordion was also quite common. German officers were fond of this instrument and often gathered to listen to songs performed by the prisoners.

Macabre Entertainment: The Games That Fascinated the Nazis

The German army spent too much time at work, so in addition to athletic and musical entertainment provided by the prisoners, they also had to use their own minds to amuse themselves. Camp commanders and directors asked higher-ranking officers to send them various board games to pass the time. They received different types of games: card games, dice games, and strategy games. One of them was “Catch the Hat,” which had been introduced during the Weimar Republic but remained popular. The pieces had the shape of hats and could be stacked. The board was circular with a central cross and appealed to the participants’ logic. It could be played by both children and adults. Other popular games were chess and checkers. Although German soldiers almost always played against each other, they sometimes challenged prisoners to see if they could beat them. In fact, Ukrainian prisoners were chess specialists, so they often defeated their superiors. This created doubts among the Germans, as it called into question which of the two was smarter. Therefore, many of the prisoners intentionally let themselves be beaten, because the possibility of a supposedly inferior person defeating their German rival, who was considered smarter, challenged the entire Nazi propaganda. Thus, when prisoners won, their executioners inflicted a severe beating on them. Card games were also popular among prisoners and soldiers. They had different rules where certain cards were worth more than others. Some soldiers played tarot, an occult practice that was quite popular among the Nazis. Despite their extreme Catholicism, they had a great interest in everything related to esotericism, astrology, alchemy, Kabbalah, and theosophy.

The Game of Life: How Football Helped Survive the Holocaust

To keep up with the times, SS soldiers had to train hard and work on their bodies. Duty hours were long, and German soldiers spent long periods in a state of immobility. Outside of working hours, they engaged in various physical exercises and sports activities that helped them keep their bodies in shape. Some practiced weightlifting, while others spent their time playing handball and football, which was becoming increasingly popular in German lands. The Third Reich saw sports as a way to mobilize men in a collective and competitive effort. During World War II, various teams were formed to compete in one of these sports and participate in internal competitions. In the concentration camps, SS teams competed in championships against teams from members of other organizations such as the Luftwaffe or the Wehrmacht. Soldiers in the camps of the General Government of Poland, in turn, organized various tournaments among themselves, and this activity grew starting in 1942. From that year on, prisoners in the camps worked more intensely. High-ranking Nazis welcomed the fact that prisoners had short periods of entertainment beyond suffering and punishment. During these breaks, some prisoners took the opportunity to be spectators at these football matches, and sometimes several of them jumped onto the field to become part of the teams. This is not surprising, because before Hitler came to power in 1933, Jews in Germany had their own clubs where they practiced various sports, which were eventually banned and closed. The two most popular were SC Hakoah in Frankfurt and Hakoah Vienna.

Among the footballers imprisoned in concentration camps was Julius Hirsch, who played for the youth team of Karlsruhe and was known for his powerful left foot. In 1909, he played his first match for the German national team, for which he made seven appearances. The most famous was the match in which he scored four goals against the Netherlands. Hirsch and Gottfried Fuchs were, until then, the only two Jews in history to play for a German national team. In 1925, at the age of 33, he quit his career as a footballer, but shortly thereafter became a football coach. With the various financial sanctions imposed by the Nazi regime on German Jews, Hirsch was fired from his job. The shock was so great that he attempted suicide, but when that failed, he was admitted to a psychiatric facility. Julius was sent to forced labor, and although his ultimate fate is unknown, it is suspected that he was murdered in Auschwitz.

Another well-known case was that of Eddy Hamel, known as the first great right-winger of Ajax in Holland. Hamel honored the Jewish community of the 1920s by being the only Jew to play for the Amsterdam team, one of the most important in the world. Following the arrival of Nazism, Eddy was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he was unfortunately killed in a gas chamber. Another case was that of Saturnino Navazo, a Spanish republican militant who was arrested in France and taken to the Mauthausen camp. When the Nazis discovered he was a footballer, they decided that instead of harsh harassment, it would be better to starve him for a while, but give him an extra ration so he could train. The soldiers sent Navazo to the kitchen, where he could live under better conditions.

One of the most iconic stories was that of Antoni Łyko, who played for Wisła Kraków in Poland in 1930. He was one of the best players of his time and was even nominated for the 1938 World Cup in France, though he could not participate due to an untimely injury. Following the German invasion of Poland, Łyko was arrested by the Gestapo for alleged ties to the Polish armed resistance and sent to Auschwitz. On June 2, 1941, Łyko participated in one of the matches between prisoners and Kapos or members of the SS. It is said that the inmates were afraid to score goals, as the German personnel subjected them to beatings after the match. Łyko, however, had no reservations and scored two goals in the match where the Polish prisoners defeated their superiors 5 to 3. The next day, he was sentenced to execution for resisting state authority, along with leading members of the Jewish community, including doctors, engineers, politicians, and students. Łyko was taken to a gravel pit outside the borders of Auschwitz. The executions took place during a party hosted by camp leader Karl Fritzsch, attended by invited officers and non-commissioned officers with their wives. According to the report that emerged after the war, Łyko resisted and did not walk with the others. In fact, on two occasions he tried to escape. Therefore, Fritzsch himself shot him in the back of the head with his pistol. Shortly thereafter, his remains disappeared in the Auschwitz crematorium along with those of his 80 murdered comrades.

In the post-war period, various stories spread about alleged matches between prisoners and guards, but not all of them are true. What was verified was that the matches did not always take place between teams of 11 players. The Germans liked to assemble teams of prisoners according to their nationality or professions. In some camps, there were teams of carpenters, cooks, cleaning staff, and others. The Nazis enjoyed playing football matches against each other and forced the prisoners to watch and applaud. One of the greatest amusements for the German personnel was watching matches between hungry and physically unfit prisoners. Some of them fainted on the field and were dragged away by their arms, as the show had to go on.

The Female Face of Evil: The Story of Ilse Koch

Nazi personnel often had other forms of entertainment besides boxing, football, cards, and chess. At the time, both high-ranking members and Nazi guards had a hidden obsession with nudity and sex. They emphasized beauty by constructing a Greek body cult. Sex was part of the daily agenda of the Nazis, not only in practice, but also in viewing, sometimes in a somewhat macabre and sick way. This fanaticism can be illustrated through the story of Ilse Koch, known by the pseudonym “the Witch of Buchenwald,” a sadistic nymphomaniac and murderous Nazi soldier. Her appearance showed her as an angelic woman with loose curly red hair and a face that seemed chiseled by Greek gods. Her SS comrades admired her for her beauty as well as her striking powers of seduction, which she used to always get what she wanted, both politically and for the satisfaction of her primitive instincts. She was completely hypnotized and drawn to Nazi doctrine, and all her actions were accompanied by her beliefs, including her perversions.

Margarete Ilse Köhler was born in 1906 in Dresden, Germany, into a middle-class family. As a child, she was a quiet, responsible, and well-behaved girl who was very popular with her schoolmates. At 15, she left school to work in a factory. Shortly thereafter, she took a job as a saleswoman in a bookstore. During this time, she began to show interest in the Nazi party, becoming its secretary and later a member. By 1932, her beauty and intelligence caught everyone’s attention, and Heinrich Himmler himself chose her as the wife of one of his favorite assistants, Karl Koch, from whom she took her last name. In 1936, they married, and three years later they moved to Buchenwald, one of the largest extermination centers, because Ilse’s husband had been appointed commander. Karl Koch was an ambitious and ruthless man, and those who knew him described him as a man who knew no boundaries. Ilse was similarly different: normally, the wives of commanders and officers did not cooperate with their husbands, but she proved to be an exception to the rule. The first few months were relatively ordinary in Koch’s perverted life, as they devoted themselves to raising their three children Artwin, Gisela, and Gudrun, although the latter died while her parents were on vacation. In fact, they refused to return even though they knew she was in a serious condition.

Ilse Koch’s malice became apparent when she and her husband built a house opposite the concentration camp so they could observe the extermination as a spectacle. They also built a zoo there, for which they had exotic species brought from all over the world. This house, known as Villa Koch, was used as a kind of riding arena where Ilse could commit her sexual crimes. This place was 40 by 100 meters and 20 meters high. Inside the riding arena, there was a room with mirror-covered walls used for collective orgies. Since it was only a few meters from the barracks, the prisoners could clearly hear what was going on inside. Obsessed with her physical appearance, Ilse had wine brought from Madeira, Portugal, to take nourishing baths. Her wardrobes were filled with expensive clothing, furs, perfumes, and shoes. In the mornings, she rode her horse through the countryside and harassed the prisoners with whips. She took pleasure in setting wild dogs on pregnant women, who were torn to pieces. The nights were filled with sadism and pleasure. She organized lesbian orgies with up to 12 people simultaneously with the wives of officers, and after a certain time moved on to having sex with her husband’s subordinates. Another of her perverse acts was standing at the entrance of the camp with bare breasts when new prisoners arrived. She caressed and lustfully sucked on their bodies while shouting obscene comments. If one of the prisoners dared to look her in the eyes, she beat him to exhaustion. According to a report that emerged after the war, Koch shouted, “What do you think you’re doing, staring at my legs?” to an inmate named Walter Rupp while slapping him with her riding crop. If there was a woman to be feared in the extermination camp, it was the “Witch of Buchenwald,” as Koch was known.

Another of the atrocious practices was a collection of lamps made from human skin. She collected the most striking tattoos of her prisoners, removing them without anesthesia after applying phenol. She also used the skins to bind books, make tablecloths, and gloves. Koch was fascinated by decorating her house with tortured prisoners. She not only placed these striking lamps on her bedside table, but also decorated her house with the heads of dead prisoners. Ilse had them chemically shrunk and then lined up in her dining room. Those who entered the Koch house commented that they had up to 12 heads at a time. In addition to using them as her own decorations, Koch sent these heads as gifts to members of the Nazi leadership. Albert Gronowski, a Jew who was forced to work in the camp’s pathology lab, mentioned that Ilse wore underwear decorated with prisoner tattoos. Koch’s orgies and sexual intercourse ended when Soviet troops arrived in Buchenwald, and despite her attempts to flee, she ended up in prison. During her 1951 trial, the prosecutor spoke the following devastating words: “She was one of the most sadistic elements of the Nazi criminal group. If there was a cry in the world, it was that of the innocent tortured people who died through her hands.” After hearing 240 witnesses, Ilse Koch managed to shout, “I am guilty. I am a sinner.” Although the original sentence was life imprisonment, it was later reduced to four years in prison. In 1967, at the age of 61, she ended her life by hanging herself with her bed sheets. In a note, she left her final words: “There is no other way out for me. Death is the only liberation.”

Human Toys: The Atrocious History of Jewish Children in the Concentration Camps

The Nazi guards outdid each other daily in terms of malice. It was not enough for them to physically and psychologically torture men and women. Some of them also took special pleasure in mocking and mistreating boys and girls of Jewish origin. Such was their macabre obsession that they turned them into objects of amusement. Some guards enjoyed smashing children against the camp walls until they died. Their mothers wept inconsolably, and the imprisoned children screamed for mercy without being able to do anything else to defend themselves. There were many children who desperately searched for food wherever they could find it. The bravest ones stole it from the officers, who, as soon as they discovered it, beat them wildly until they were killed. In the various concentration camps, children grew accustomed to living in inhumane conditions. Those old enough to walk and carry objects with their hands were forced into hard labor for long hours, without access to rest and in desperate hunger. Perhaps the worst thing for these children was not their own death, but having to endure watching their younger siblings die in their own arms while the guards watched with indifference and pleasure.

One of the stories that stands out for its malice is that of twin sisters Eva and Miriam Mozes Kor, who became the favorite toys of Josef Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death,” who was obsessed with learning more about the genetics of twins and performed practices that were as harmful as they were abject. In 1944, at the age of 14, the sisters arrived in Auschwitz with their family and soon became objects of experimentation for Mengele. The Angel of Death used to walk through the halls of Auschwitz with chocolate in his hands to lure children and persuade them to become his prey. Apparently, the children approached him with enthusiasm, believing he was harmless, but soon experienced terror firsthand. Thus he met Miriam and Eva. Mengele tied the twins’ arms to restrict blood circulation until they fainted. As soon as they were unconscious, he injected chemicals into their eyes and other parts of their bodies. The twins came out of his laboratory crying and inconsolable over what their bodies had to endure, but the Angel of Death emerged with a smile from ear to ear, whistling some classical music and more than satisfied with his alleged contribution to science.

Veiled Hell: Women Forced into Brothels

The Nazis presented themselves as conservative when it came to sexual acts, but as the case of Ilse Koch showed, this was only a matter of discourse that deviated from reality. They claimed sex was a way to increase the Aryan race, to populate Europe with supposedly superior people, and thus they encouraged both premarital sex and sex between teenagers. However, they mentioned that the goal was not based on sexual pleasure, but on obedience to the Führer and his goal of territorial expansion. One of the obstacles to this goal was the existence of homosexuals. For Hitler, they represented an obstacle to reproduction. Therefore, he ordered the creation of a network of brothels in the various concentration camps. While death raged in the gas chambers just meters away, SS soldiers and guards could engage in sexual relations so as not to forget their masculinity and not associate with other soldiers or, worse yet, have sexual relations with Jewish prisoners.

The first brothel for German soldiers was the one in Mauthausen, located in Block 1 in a building of the Gusen subcamp. There, 35 lower-class German women were housed, who had been recruited with the promise that they would soon be released, which never happened. What seemed like the promise of a life-changing experience turned into a daily nightmare. The brothel was not only open to soldiers, but also to some prisoners, with the exception of Jews and Soviets. Only political prisoners of Austrian, French, Czech, Spanish, and German origin were lucky. The most deserving workers in repairs, sanitation, electricity, cooking, football players, and musicians also enjoyed the benefit. However, most of these lucky ones mostly sought a tender moment of companionship and conversation and resisted sexual intercourse. They sought intimacy, a woman who could emotionally support them. Men who went to the brothel had to successfully pass a medical examination to rule out possible sexually transmitted diseases. Those prisoners who were invited by their superiors and held communist ideology generally refused to accept the benefit and tried to raise their voices so the rest would also oppose it and not take advantage of the sexual slavery to which the women were subjected. German soldiers showed no mercy or consideration and did not hesitate to treat the sex slaves working in the brothel as objects. They were forced to have sex with up to five men a day in 15-minute shifts that cost two Reichsmarks, which never reached the hands of the sex workers. They were often watched together with their customers by SS men spying through peepholes. It is estimated that about 200 women passed through the Mauthausen brothel and provided their services until the arrival of the Allies. But that was not the only brothel. There were dozens scattered across Germany.

The second brothel was the one in Auschwitz, established on June 30, 1943, and two weeks later the same in Buchenwald. In 1944, they revived the brothels of Neuengamme, Dachau, Dora-Mittelbau, and Flossenbürg. Usually, these brothels were built like the barracks, with small individual rooms for more than 20 prisoners, controlled by a foreman or an officer. In addition to women of humble class, they also recruited prisoners from the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp. Then they selected by beauty: the prettiest ones were sent to SS brothels, the less pretty ones to brothels run by soldiers and prisoners, and prisoners not in the best physical condition were brought to brothels in the concentration camps. Women were constantly replaced due to exhaustion or illness and then sent to certain death. Many of them were forced into abortions and sterilizations that led to tragic fates. The Kapos used these services more than anyone else. The most popular time was at night, starting at 8:00 PM and ending at 10:00 PM. In addition, Sunday was the worst day for the sex slaves, as they had to work all afternoon. There is evidence that sex slaves often bore tattoos on their chests with the inscription “Feldhure” (camp whore).

All these resources were deployed with the same objective: to keep the Nazi personnel from getting bored, to keep them focused on their work, and to keep them aligned with Nazi ideology. For the Nazi leadership, the consequences and suffering inflicted on people who did not belong to the supposed Aryan race were unimportant. Every effort that benefited their men had to be made, as they felt this would guarantee their ultimate victory. Board games, sports, tarot, brothels, and sexual orgies were part of a dangerous “anything goes” that left only incurable wounds among the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and World War II.