Sexual abuse in the camps took many forms. Barbaric medical experiments conducted by Nazi doctors robbed men and women of their sexual organs. At Auschwitz, women spared from the gas chambers upon arrival were forced to parade their nakedness in the showers before leering SS guards, who delighted in poking their breasts.

Within the camps, rumors abounded that attractive young women were forced into brothels. At Buchenwald, some political prisoners, known for their ethical and religious principles, were compelled by the SS to visit the camp brothel, populated by non-Jewish "volunteers" from the Ravensbrück concentration camp for women. Irma Grese, the sadistic SS supervisor at Auschwitz-Birkenau, was rumored to have had homosexual relations with prisoners whom she then sent to the gas chambers. To save their lives, starving women at Birkenau sometimes bartered sex for food from male prisoners.

While Nazi racial ideology prohibited relations between Jews and "Aryans," there were some instances of rape. The Nazis, though, were not the only ones who committed sexual abuse. Buchenwald survivors report that Polish and Russian boys, some as young as 12, were forced into homosexual acts by sexually rapacious prisoners. Victims of sexual abuse have largely kept silent, leaving this aspect of camp life shrouded in ambiguity.