‘You are going to be my Bettmann’: Exploitative Sexual Relationships and the Lives of the Pipels in Nazi Concentration Camps

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since the late 2000s, Holocaust historians have made great strides in their investigations of sexual violence faced by women and girls. More recently, scholars have begun to address sexual violence faced by men and boys, primarily through works focusing on Pipels, boys forced into sexual relationships with older prisoners in return for certain privileges in the concentration camps. However, a holistic image of these sexual relationships and a thorough examination of agency and consent are still lacking. Using over forty memoirs and testimonies across several archives, this article explores how these relationships formed, highlighting the multiplicity of experiences. It shows how prisoners exploited the camps’ hierarchical power structures to abuse Jewish boys, capitalizing on the boys’ age, size, and positions as Jews within that hierarchy to enslave the easiest and most accessible victims. The article examines the complicated nature of consent and agency within these relationships, arguing that this violence more closely resembles sexual slavery rather than sexual barter, and it proposes to term them ‘exploitative sexual relationships.’ This terminology reflects the non-consensual, continuous nature of violence while respecting the agency that was often wielded by these boys, capturing a broader number of experiences than just those of boys in semi-official positions as Pipels. By clarifying understandings of these relationships, scholars can also begin to understand the wider vulnerability of Jewish males to sexual violence.