Sonderbau Story

<p dir="ltr">In 1942, prisoner brothels euphemistically called the “Sonderbau” or “special barrack,” were introduced as labour incentives at select Nazi concentration camps. Asocial prisoners from the Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp usually staffed these spaces. Ostracized by other prisoners and relegated to the worst labour details, they were motivated to increase their chances of survival through sex work. These victims of National Socialism remain absent from our history or popular culture. My screenplay, “Sonderbau Story,” is an effort to rectify this historical erasure by offering an empathetic portrait of these women. The revolutionary Louis Riel said: “My people will sleep for one hundred years, but when they awake, it will be the artists who give them their spirit back.” Sonderbau Story is intended as an act of memory activism, employing the superpowers of imagination and creativity to return to the forgotten asocial women of the Nazi concentration camp brothels their “spirits.”</p>