EXPLORING THE KAPO-PIPEL RELATIONSHIP: CONDITIONS FACILITATING THE SEXUAL EXPLOITATION OF YOUNG JEWISH BOYS IN THE CONCENTRATION CAMP

Abstract

Sexual violence in the Holocaust has been a sorely under-researched field, especially the relatively unknown and taboo phenomenon of sexual relations between male prisoner functionaries, kapos, and young Jewish boys, pipels, in the Nazi concentration camps. Despite the strong anti-homosexual ideology in the Third Reich, sexual exploitative relationships continued to occur between the kapos and the pipels. To understand this anomalous relationship, the thesis draws on a collection of survivor oral testimonies from the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive (Shoah Foundation) to examine the surrounding camp conditions that facilitated the sexual exploitation. First, it demonstrates the complexity of the kapo-pipel sexual exploitative relationship (SER) by highlighting cases where the pipels were willing to reciprocate the kapo’s sexual advances for a better chance at survival, while other pipels continually rejected the kapo and were raped or punished instead. This spectrum of consent in turn meant that the archival indexing term “gay male sexual activities” did not accurately represent the testimonies that discussed the kapo-pipel SER. Drawing on the testimonies, the thesis then examines the Birkenau extermination camp and suggests that the prisoner self-governance system in Birkenau, combined with the lack of involvement of SS guards in the daily running of the camp and the lack of oversight from the main administration in Berlin, allowed the kapos free rein to sexually exploit the pipels with few consequences.