The most terrible torture in the history of mankind. Torture in concentration camps

Torture is often referred to as the various petty disorders that occur with everyone in everyday life. This definition is awarded the education of disobedient children, a long standing in the queue, a lot of washing, subsequent ironing and even the process of cooking. All this, of course, is very painful and unpleasant (although the degree of exhaustion depends to a large extent on the nature and inclinations of a person), but still little resembles the most terrible torture in the history of mankind. The practice of interrogation "with predilection" and other violent actions against prisoners took place practically in all countries of the world. The timeframe is also not defined, but since modern events are psychologically closer to the relatively recent events, his attention is also drawn to the methods and special equipment invented in the twentieth century, particularly in the German concentration camps of the Third Reich. But there were ancient and medieval tortures. Fascists also taught their counterparts from the Japanese counterintelligence, the NKVD and other similar punitive agencies. So why was all this mockery of people?

The meaning of the term

To begin with, starting to study any question or phenomenon, any researcher tries to give him a definition. "It's right to call it - half-understand," says Chinese wisdom.

So, torture is the conscious infliction of suffering. It does not matter the nature of the torment, it can be not only physical (in the form of pain, thirst, hunger or deprivation of sleep), but also moral and psychological. By the way, the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind, as a rule, combine both "channels of influence".

But not only the fact of suffering is important. Meaningless torture is called torture. From him, torture is purposeful. In other words, a person is beaten by a whip or suspended on a rack not just for that, but in order to get some result. Using violence, the victim is encouraged to confess guilt, to disclose hidden information, and sometimes even simply punish for some misdemeanor or crime. The twentieth century added one more item to the list of possible targets of torture: torture in concentration camps was sometimes performed in order to study the reaction of the body to unbearable conditions for determining the limit of human possibilities. These experiments were recognized by the Nuremberg Tribunal as anti-human and pseudo-scientific, which did not prevent them from studying their results after the defeat of Nazi Germany by physiologists of the victorious countries.

Death or Judgment

The purposeful nature of the actions suggests that, after obtaining the result, even the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind ceased. Continue them did not make sense. The executioner was usually occupied by a professional who knew about the painful techniques and characteristics of psychology, if not all, then very much, and there was no point in spending his efforts on meaningless bullying. After recognizing the victim in a crime, she could wait, depending on the degree of civilization of the society, immediate death or treatment followed by trial. The legally executed execution after partisan interrogations during the investigation was typical for Germany's punitive justice in the initial Hitlerite era and for Stalin's "open trials" (Shakhty case, trial of the industrial party, massacres against the Trotskyites, etc.). After giving the defendants a tolerable appearance, they were dressed in decent suits and demonstrated to the public. Broken morally, people often obediently repeated everything, in what they were forced to admit the investigators. Torture and executions were put on stream. Truthfulness of the testimony did not matter. In both Germany and the USSR in the 1930s, the defendant's confession was considered a "queen of evidence" (A. Ya. Vyshinsky, prosecutor of the USSR). Brutal torture was used to obtain it.

Deadly torture of the Inquisition

Few in any area of its activities (except in the manufacture of weapons of murder) humanity has been so successful. At the same time, it should be noted that in recent centuries there has been even some regression compared to ancient times. European executions and torture of women in the Middle Ages were carried out, as a rule, on charges of witchcraft, and the cause was most often the external appeal of the unfortunate victim. However, the Inquisition sometimes condemned those who, in fact, committed terrible crimes, but the specificity of that time was the undeniable doom of the condemned. No matter how long the torment lasted, they ended only with the death of the convict. As an instrument of execution, they could use the Iron Vine, the Copper Bull, the fire, or Edgar Poe's described pendulum with a sharp edge, methodically falling on the victim's breast inch by inch. The terrible torture of the Inquisition was time-consuming and accompanied by unthinkable moral torments. Preliminary investigation could be conducted using other ingenious mechanical devices for slow splitting of the bones of the fingers and limbs and rupture of the muscular ligaments. The most famous tools were:

- a metal sliding pear used for particularly sophisticated torture of women in the Middle Ages;

- "Spanish boots";

- Spanish chair with clamps and brazier for legs and buttocks;

- Iron bra (pectoral), worn on the chest in a red-hot form;

- "crocodiles" and special forceps for crushing male genitalia.

The torturers of the Inquisition had another torture equipment, which it is better not to know people with sensitive mentality.

East, Ancient and modern

Whatever the ingenious European inventors of self-injurious technology, but the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind are invented yet in the East. The Inquisition used metal tools, which sometimes had a very intricate design, in Asia they preferred everything natural, natural (today these funds, perhaps, would be called environmentally friendly). Insects, plants, animals - everything went on. Eastern torture and executions had the same goals as the European ones, but were technically different in duration and greater sophistication. Ancient Persian executioners, for example, practiced scaphism (from the Greek word "skafium" - trough). The victim was immobilized by fetters, tied to a trough, forced to eat honey and drink milk, then plastered the whole body with a sweet compound, and lowered into a swamp. Blood-sucking insects slowly eaten up a person. Similarly, approximately in the case of execution on an anthill, and if the unfortunate person was to be burnt in the scorching sun, he was also cut off for his agonizing torments. There were other types of torture, in which elements of the biosystem were used. For example, it is known that bamboo grows rapidly, per meter per day. It's enough just to hang the victim at a small distance over the young growth, and cut off the tip of the stems at an acute angle. The attempted person has time to think, confess to everything and give out accomplices. If he shows tenacity, he will slowly and painfully poke plants. This choice was, however, not always given.

Torture as a method of inquiry

Both in the Middle Ages and in the later period, various types of torture were used not only by inquisitors and other officially recognized fanatical structures, but also by ordinary state authorities, now called law enforcement. He was part of a set of methods of investigation and inquiry. Since the second half of the 16th century, various types of bodily effects have been practiced in Russia, such as whip, hanging, racking, moxibustion and open fire, immersion in water, and so on. Enlightened Europe, too, was not at all different in humanism, but practice showed that in some cases torture, bullying and even the fear of death did not guarantee the clarification of the truth. Moreover, in some cases, the victim was ready to confess to the most shameful crime, preferring a terrible end to endless horror and pain. There is a well-known case of a miller, remembered by the inscription on the pediment of the French palace of justice. He took over the torture of someone else's guilt, was executed, and the real criminal was soon caught.

Abolition of torture in different countries

At the end of the XVII century, a gradual departure from the torture practice began and the transition from it to other, more human methods of inquiry. One of the results of the Enlightenment was the realization that punishment is not cruel, and its inevitability affects the reduction of criminal activity. In Prussia, torture was abolished since 1754, this country became the first to put its proceedings in the service of humanism. Then the process went forward, different states followed its example in the following sequence:

Note:

*) The legislation of the various cantons of Switzerland varied at different times of the specified period.

Two countries deserve special mention - Britain and Russia.

Catherine the Great abolished torture in 1774, issuing a secret decree. This, on the one hand, continued to keep criminals in fear, but, on the other hand, she showed a desire to follow the ideas of the Enlightenment. Legally, this decision was already made by Alexander I in 1801.

As for England, there the tortures were banned in 1772, but not all, but only a few.

Illegal torture

The legislative ban by no means meant their complete exclusion from the practice of pre-trial investigation. In all countries there were representatives of the police class, ready to break the law in the name of his triumph. Another thing is that their actions were carried out illegally, and in case of exposure they were threatened with legal persecution. Of course, the methods have changed significantly. It was necessary to "work with people" more cautiously, leaving no visible traces. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries heavy objects with heavy surfaces, such as sandbags, thick volumes (the irony of the situation was manifested in the fact that most often they were codes of law), rubber hoses, etc., were used in the course. They were not left without Attention and methods of moral pressure. Some investigators sometimes threatened with severe punishments, long terms and even reprisals against relatives. This, too, was torture. The horror experienced by the defendants prompted them to make confessions, to stipulate themselves and receive undeserved punishments, up to the death penalty. Most of the police officers did their duty honestly, studying the evidence and collecting testimonies to present a valid charge. Everything changed after the coming to power in some countries of totalitarian and dictatorial regimes. It happened in the XX century.

In Soviet Russia

After the October Revolution of 1917, the Civil War broke out on the territory of the former Russian Empire, in which both belligerents often did not consider themselves bound by the legislative norms that were mandatory under the tsar. Torture of prisoners of war for the purpose of obtaining information about the enemy was practiced by both the White Guard counterintelligence and the Cheka. In the years of the Red Terror , executions took place most often, but bullying the representatives of the "exploiter class", which included the clergy, nobles, and simply decently dressed "gentlemen", took on a mass character. In the twenties, thirties and forties, the NKVD bodies used prohibited methods of inquiry, depriving prisoners of interrogation, food, water, beating and mutilating them. This was done with the permission of the leadership, and sometimes on his direct orders. The purpose was rarely to find out the truth - reprisals were made for intimidation, and the investigator's task was to obtain a signature on the protocol containing confession in counterrevolutionary activity, as well as the agreement of other citizens. As a rule, Stalin's "master's shoulder cases" did not use special torture devices, content with accessible objects, such as a paperweight (they were beaten on the head), or even an ordinary door that was pinched by fingers and other protruding parts of the body.

In fascist Germany

Torture in concentration camps created after Adolf Hitler came to power differed in style from those previously used in that they represented a strange mixture of oriental sophistication with European practicality. Initially, these "correctional institutions" were created for the guilty Germans and representatives of national minorities who were declared hostile (gypsies and Jews). Then came the turn of experiments, which had the character of some scientific character, but in cruelty they surpassed the most terrible tortures in the history of mankind.
In attempts to create antidotes and vaccines, Nazi doctors from the SS injected prisoners with lethal injections, conducted operations without anesthesia, including cavities, frozen the prisoners, stung them with heat, prevented them from sleeping, eating and drinking. Thus, they wanted to develop technologies for the "production" of ideal soldiers who are not afraid of frost, heat and injuries, resistant to the effects of poisonous substances and pathogenic bacilli. The history of tortures of the Second World War forever imprinted the names of doctors Pletner and Mengele, who, along with other representatives of criminal fascist medicine, personified inhumanity. They also carried out experiments on elongation of limbs by mechanical stretching, strangulation of people in discharged air and other experiments that caused agonizing agony, which lasted for sometimes long hours.

Torture of women by fascists concerned mainly the development of ways to deprive them of their reproductive function. Different methods have been studied - from simple (removal of the uterus) to sophisticated, having in the event of a Reich victory the prospect of mass application (exposure and exposure to chemicals).

It all ended before the Victory, in 1944, when the concentration camps began to liberate the Soviet and Allied forces. Even the appearance of the prisoners was more eloquent than any proof that the content in inhuman terms was in themselves torture.

Current state of affairs

The fascists' torture became the standard of rigidity. After the defeat of Germany in 1945, humanity joyfully sighed in the hope that this will never happen again. To great regret, albeit not on such a scale, but the torture of the flesh, mockery of human dignity and moral humiliation remain some of the eerie signs of the modern world. Developed countries that declare their commitment to rights and freedoms are seeking legal loopholes for creating special territories where compliance with their own laws is not necessary. Prisoners of secret prisons have been exposed to punitive measures for many years without presenting specific charges against them. The methods used by servicemen of many countries in the course of local and major armed conflicts towards prisoners and just suspected of sympathizing with the enemy surpass at times the brutality of torture of the Middle Ages and mockery of people in Nazi concentration camps. In the international investigation of such precedents too often, instead of objectivity, one can observe the ambiguity of standards when war crimes of either side are completely or partially hushed up.

Will the era of the new Enlightenment come, when finally, finally and finally, torture will be recognized as a disgrace to humanity and will they be banned? So far, there is little hope of this ...