The most terrible tortures in the history of mankind (21 photos). Fanatics of the Soviet Army - About the atrocities of the Soviet “liberators” in Europe

Women captured by the Germans. How the Nazis abused captured Soviet women

The Second World War swept through humanity like a roller coaster. Millions of dead and many more crippled lives and destinies. All the warring parties did truly monstrous things, justifying everything by war.

Carefully! The material presented in this collection may seem unpleasant or intimidating.

Of course, the Nazis were especially distinguished in this regard, and this does not even take into account the Holocaust. There are many documented and outright fictional stories about what German soldiers did.

One high-ranking German officer recalled the briefings they received. It is interesting that there was only one order regarding female soldiers: “Shoot.”

Most did just that, but among the dead they often find the bodies of women in the uniform of the Red Army - soldiers, nurses or orderlies, on whose bodies there were traces of cruel torture.

Residents of the village of Smagleevka, for example, say that when they had the Nazis, they found a seriously wounded girl. And despite everything, they dragged her onto the road, stripped her and shot her.

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But before her death, she was tortured for a long time for pleasure. Her entire body was turned into a bloody mess. The Nazis did much the same with female partisans. Before execution, they could be stripped naked and kept in the cold for a long time.

Women servicemen of the Red Army captured by the Germans, part 1

Of course, the captives were constantly raped.

Women servicemen of the Red Army captured by the Finns and Germans, part 2. Jewish women

And if the highest German ranks were forbidden to have intimate relations with captives, then ordinary rank and file had more freedom in this matter.

And if the girl did not die after the whole company had used her, then she was simply shot.

The situation in the concentration camps was even worse. Unless the girl was lucky and one of the higher ranks of the camp took her as a servant. Although this did not save much from rape.

In this regard, the most cruel place was camp No. 337. There, prisoners were kept naked for hours in the cold, hundreds of people were put into barracks at a time, and anyone who could not do the work was immediately killed. About 700 prisoners of war were exterminated in Stalag every day.

Women were subjected to the same torture as men, if not much worse. In terms of torture, the Spanish Inquisition could envy the Nazis.

Soviet soldiers knew exactly what was happening in the concentration camps and the risks of captivity. Therefore, no one wanted or intended to give up. They fought to the end, until death; she was the only winner in those terrible years.

Happy memory to all those who died in the war...

What did the Nazis do with the captured women? Truth and myths regarding the atrocities that German soldiers committed against Red Army soldiers, partisans, snipers and other females.

During the Second World War, many volunteer girls were sent to the front; almost a million especially female ones were sent to the front, and almost all signed up as volunteers. It was already much more difficult for women at the front than for men, but when they fell into the clutches of the Germans, all hell broke loose.

Women who remained under occupation in Belarus or Ukraine also suffered a lot. Sometimes they managed to survive the German regime relatively safely (memoirs, books by Bykov, Nilin), but this was not without humiliation. Even more often, a concentration camp, rape, and torture awaited them.

Execution by shooting or hanging

The treatment of captured women who fought in positions in the Soviet army was quite simple - they were shot. But scouts or partisans, most often, faced hanging. Usually after much bullying.

Most of all, the Germans loved to undress captured Red Army women, keep them in the cold or drive them along the street. This comes from the Jewish pogroms. In those days, girlish shame was a very strong psychological tool; the Germans were surprised at how many virgins there were among the captives, so they actively used such a measure to completely crush, break, and humiliate.

Public flogging, beatings, carousel interrogations are also some of the favorite methods of the fascists.

Traces of torture and abuse were found on the bodies of murdered partisans (for example, the famous Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya). Their breasts were cut off, stars were cut out, and so on.

Did the Germans impale you?

Today, when some idiots are trying to justify the crimes of the fascists, others are trying to instill more fear. For example, they write that the Germans impaled captured women on stakes. There is no documentary or photographic evidence of this, and it’s simply unlikely that the Nazis wanted to waste time on this. They considered themselves “cultured,” so acts of intimidation were carried out mainly through mass executions, hangings, or general burning in huts.

Of the exotic types of executions, only the gas van can be mentioned. This is a special van where people were killed using exhaust gases. Naturally, they were also used to eliminate women. True, such cars did not serve Nazi Germany for long, since the Nazis had to wash them for a long time after the execution.

Death camps

Soviet women prisoners of war were sent to concentration camps on an equal basis with men, but, of course, the number of prisoners who reached such a prison was much less than the initial number. Partisans and intelligence officers were usually hanged immediately, but nurses, doctors, and representatives of the civilian population who were Jewish or related to party work could be driven away.

The fascists did not really favor women, since they worked worse than men. It is known that the Nazis carried out medical experiments on people; women's ovaries were cut out. The famous Nazi sadistic doctor Joseph Mengele sterilized women with X-rays and tested them on the human body’s ability to withstand high voltage.

Famous women's concentration camps are Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Salaspils. In total, the Nazis opened more than 40 thousand camps and ghettos, and executions were carried out. The worst situation was for women with children, whose blood was taken away. Stories about how a mother begged a nurse to inject her child with poison so that he would not be tortured by experiments are still horrifying. But for the Nazis, dissecting a living baby and introducing bacteria and chemicals into the child was in the order of things.

Verdict

About 5 million Soviet citizens died in captivity and concentration camps. More than half of them were women, however, there would hardly have been even more than 100 thousand prisoners of war. Basically, representatives of the fair sex in greatcoats were dealt with on the spot.

Of course, the Nazis responded for their crimes, both with their complete defeat and with executions during the Nuremberg trials. But the worst thing was that many, after the Nazi concentration camps, were sent to Stalin’s camps. This, for example, was often done with residents of occupied regions, intelligence workers, signalmen, etc.

This name became a symbol of the brutal attitude of the Nazis towards captured children.

During the three years of the camp’s existence (1941–1944), according to various sources, about one hundred thousand people died in Salaspils, seven thousand of them were children.

The place from which you never return

This camp was built by captured Jews in 1941 on the territory of a former Latvian training ground 18 kilometers from Riga near the village of the same name. According to documents, initially “Salaspils” (German: Kurtenhof) was called an “educational labor” camp, and not a concentration camp.

The area was of impressive size, fenced with barbed wire, and was built up with hastily constructed wooden barracks. Each was designed for 200-300 people, but often there were from 500 to 1000 people in one room.

Initially, Jews deported from Germany to Latvia were doomed to death in the camp, but since 1942, “undesirables” from a variety of countries were sent here: France, Germany, Austria, and the Soviet Union.

The Salaspils camp also became notorious because it was here that the Nazis took blood from innocent children for the needs of the army and abused young prisoners in every possible way.

Full donors for the Reich

New prisoners were brought in regularly. They were forced to strip naked and sent to the so-called bathhouse. It was necessary to walk half a kilometer through the mud, and then wash in ice-cold water. After this, those who arrived were placed in barracks and all their belongings were taken away.

There were no names, surnames, or titles - only serial numbers. Many died almost immediately; those who managed to survive after several days of captivity and torture were “sorted.”

Children were separated from their parents. If the mothers were not given back, the guards took the babies by force. There were terrible screams and screams. Many women went crazy; some of them were placed in the hospital, and some were shot on the spot.

Infants and children under six years of age were sent to a special barracks, where they died of hunger and disease. The Nazis experimented on older prisoners: they injected poisons, performed operations without anesthesia, took blood from children, which was transferred to hospitals for wounded soldiers of the German army. Many children became “full donors” - their blood was taken from them until they died.

Considering that the prisoners were practically not fed: a piece of bread and a gruel made from vegetable waste, the number of child deaths amounted to hundreds per day. The corpses, like garbage, were taken out in huge baskets and burned in the crematorium ovens or dumped in disposal pits.

Covering my tracks

In August 1944, before the arrival of Soviet troops, in an attempt to erase traces of the atrocities, the Nazis burned down many of the barracks. The surviving prisoners were taken to the Stutthof concentration camp, and German prisoners of war were kept on the territory of Salaspils until October 1946.

After the liberation of Riga from the Nazis, the commission to investigate Nazi atrocities discovered 652 children's corpses in the camp. Mass graves and human remains were also found: ribs, hip bones, teeth.

One of the most eerie photographs, clearly illustrating the events of that time, is the “Salaspils Madonna”, the corpse of a woman hugging a dead baby. It was established that they were buried alive.

The truth hurts my eyes

Only in 1967, the Salaspils memorial complex was erected on the site of the camp, which still exists today. Many famous Russian and Latvian sculptors and architects worked on the ensemble, including Ernst Neizvestny. The road to Salaspils begins with a massive concrete slab, the inscription on which reads: “Behind these walls the earth groans.”

Further on a small field rise symbolic figures with “speaking” names: “Unbroken”, “Humiliated”, “Oath”, “Mother”. On both sides of the road there are barracks with iron bars, where people bring flowers, children's toys and sweets, and on the black marble wall, notches measure the days spent by innocents in the “death camp.”

Today, some Latvian historians blasphemously call the Salaspils camp “educational-labor” and “socially useful,” refusing to acknowledge the atrocities that occurred near Riga during the Second World War.

In 2015, an exhibition dedicated to the victims of Salaspils was banned in Latvia. Officials considered that such an event would harm the country's image. As a result, the exhibition “Stolen Childhood. Victims of the Holocaust through the eyes of young prisoners of the Nazi concentration camp Salaspils” was held at the Russian Center for Science and Culture in Paris.

In 2017, a scandal also occurred at the press conference “Salaspils camp, history and memory.” One of the speakers tried to present his original point of view on historical events, but received severe rebuff from the participants. “It hurts to hear how today you are trying to forget about the past. We cannot allow such terrible events to happen again. God forbid you experience something like this,” one of the women who managed to survive in Salaspils addressed the speaker.

In his memoirs, officer Bruno Schneider told what kind of instruction German soldiers received before being sent to the Russian front. Regarding the female Red Army soldiers, the order said one thing: “Shoot!”

This is what many German units did. Among those killed in battle and encirclement, a huge number of bodies of women in Red Army uniform were found. Among them are many nurses and female paramedics. Traces on their bodies indicated that many were brutally tortured and then shot.

Residents of Smagleevka (Voronezh region) said after their liberation in 1943 that at the beginning of the war, a young Red Army girl died a terrible death in their village. She was seriously injured. Despite this, the Nazis stripped her naked, dragged her onto the road and shot her.

Horrifying traces of torture remained on the unfortunate woman's body. Before her death, her breasts were cut off and her entire face and arms were completely mangled. The woman's body was a complete bloody mess. They did the same with Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya. Before the show execution, the Nazis kept her half naked in the cold for hours.

Women in captivity

Captured Soviet soldiers—and women too—were supposed to be “sorted.” The weakest, wounded and exhausted were subject to destruction. The rest were used for the most difficult jobs in concentration camps.

In addition to these atrocities, female Red Army soldiers were constantly subjected to rape. The highest military ranks of the Wehrmacht were forbidden to enter into intimate relationships with Slavic women, so they did it in secret. The rank and file had a certain freedom here. Having found one female Red Army soldier or nurse, she could be raped by a whole company of soldiers. If the girl did not die after that, she was shot.

In concentration camps, the leadership often selected the most attractive girls from among the prisoners and took them to “serve.” This is what the camp doctor Orlyand did in Shpalaga (prisoner of war camp) No. 346 near the city of Kremenchug. The guards themselves regularly raped prisoners in the women's block of the concentration camp.

This was the case in Shpalaga No. 337 (Baranovichi), about which the head of this camp, Yarosh, testified during a tribunal meeting in 1967.

Shpalag No. 337 was distinguished by particularly cruel, inhumane conditions of detention. Both women and men Red Army soldiers were kept half naked in the cold for hours. Hundreds of them were stuffed into lice-infested barracks. Anyone who could not stand it and fell was immediately shot by the guards. Every day, more than 700 captured military personnel were destroyed in Shpalaga No. 337.

Women prisoners of war were subjected to torture, the cruelty of which medieval inquisitors could only envy: they were impaled, their insides were stuffed with hot red pepper, etc. They were often mocked by German commandants, many of whom were distinguished by obvious sadistic inclinations. Commandant Shpalag No. 337 was called a “cannibal” behind her back, which spoke eloquently about her character.

Not only the torture undermined the morale and last strength of the exhausted women, but also the lack of basic hygiene. There was no talk of any washing for the prisoners. Insect bites and purulent infections were added to the wounds. Women soldiers knew how the Nazis treated them, and therefore they fought to the last.

Like torture with bamboo, the “iron maiden” is considered by many researchers to be a terrible legend. Perhaps these metal sarcophagi with sharp spikes inside only frightened the people under investigation, after which they confessed to anything. The "Iron Maiden" was invented at the end of the 18th century, i.e. already at the end of the Catholic Inquisition.
How it works?
1) The victim is stuffed into the sarcophagus and the door is closed;
2) The spikes driven into the inner walls of the “iron maiden” are quite short and do not pierce the victim, but only cause pain. The investigator, as a rule, receives a confession in a matter of minutes, which the arrested person only has to sign;
3) If the prisoner shows fortitude and continues to remain silent, long nails, knives and rapiers are pushed through special holes in the sarcophagus. The pain becomes simply unbearable;
4) The victim never admits to what she had done, then she was locked in a sarcophagus for a long time, where she died from loss of blood;
5) Some models of the “iron maiden” were provided with spikes at eye level in order to quickly poke them out.
3. Skafism
The name of this torture comes from the Greek “scaphium”, which means “trough”. Scaphism was popular in ancient Persia. During the torture, the victim, most often a prisoner of war, was devoured alive by various insects and their larvae who were partial to human flesh and blood.
How it works?
1) The prisoner is placed in a shallow trough and wrapped in chains.
2) He is force-fed large quantities of milk and honey, which causes the victim to have profuse diarrhea, which attracts insects.
3) The prisoner, having shit himself and smeared with honey, is allowed to float in a trough in a swamp, where there are many hungry creatures.
4) The insects immediately begin their meal, with the living flesh of the martyr as the main dish.
4. The Terrible Pear


“The pear is lying there - you can’t eat it,” it is said about the medieval European weapon for “educating” blasphemers, liars, women who gave birth out of wedlock, and gay men. Depending on the crime, the torturer thrust the pear into the sinner's mouth, anus or vagina.
How it works?
1) A tool consisting of pointed pear-shaped leaf-shaped segments is inserted into the client’s desired body hole;
2) The executioner little by little turns the screw on the top of the pear, while the “leaves” segments bloom inside the martyr, causing hellish pain;
3) After the pear is completely opened, the offender receives internal injuries incompatible with life and dies in terrible agony, if he has not already fallen into unconsciousness.
5. Copper Bull


The design of this death unit was developed by the ancient Greeks, or, to be more precise, by the coppersmith Perillus, who sold his terrible bull to the Sicilian tyrant Phalaris, who simply loved to torture and kill people in unusual ways.
A living person was pushed inside the copper statue through a special door.
So
Phalaris first tested the unit on its creator, the greedy Perilla. Subsequently, Phalaris himself was roasted in a bull.
How it works?
1) The victim is closed in a hollow copper statue of a bull;
2) A fire is lit under the bull’s belly;
3) The victim is fried alive, like a ham in a frying pan;
4) The structure of the bull is such that the cries of the martyr come from the mouth of the statue, like a bull’s roar;
5) Jewelry and amulets were made from the bones of the executed, which were sold at bazaars and were in great demand..
6. Torture by rats


Torture by rats was very popular in ancient China. However, we will look at the rat punishment technique developed by 16th century Dutch Revolution leader Diedrick Sonoy.
How it works?
1) The stripped naked martyr is placed on a table and tied;
2) Large, heavy cages with hungry rats are placed on the prisoner’s stomach and chest. The bottom of the cells is opened using a special valve;
3) Hot coals are placed on top of the cages to stir up the rats;
4) Trying to escape the heat of hot coals, rats gnaw their way through the flesh of the victim.
7. Cradle of Judas

The Judas Cradle was one of the most torturous torture machines in the arsenal of the Suprema - the Spanish Inquisition. Victims usually died from infection, as a result of the fact that the pointed seat of the torture machine was never disinfected. The Cradle of Judas, as an instrument of torture, was considered “loyal” because it did not break bones or tear ligaments.
How it works?
1) The victim, whose hands and feet are tied, is seated on the top of a pointed pyramid;
2) The top of the pyramid is thrust into the anus or vagina;
3) Using ropes, the victim is gradually lowered lower and lower;
4) The torture continues for several hours or even days until the victim dies from powerlessness and pain, or from blood loss due to rupture of soft tissues.
8. Trampling by elephants

For several centuries, this execution was practiced in India and Indochina. An elephant is very easy to train and teaching it to trample a guilty victim with its huge feet is a matter of just a few days.
How it works?
1. The victim is tied to the floor;
2. A trained elephant is brought into the hall to crush the martyr’s head;
3. Sometimes before the “head test,” animals crush the victims’ arms and legs in order to amuse the audience.
9. Rack

Probably the most famous and unrivaled death machine of its kind called the “rack”. It was first tested around 300 AD. on the Christian martyr Vincent of Zaragoza.
Anyone who survived the rack could no longer use their muscles and became a helpless vegetable.
How it works?
1. This instrument of torture is a special bed with rollers at both ends, around which ropes are wound to hold the victim’s wrists and ankles. As the rollers rotated, the ropes pulled in opposite directions, stretching the body;
2. Ligaments in the victim’s arms and legs are stretched and torn, bones pop out of their joints.
3. Another version of the rack was also used, called strappado: it consisted of 2 pillars dug into the ground and connected by a crossbar. The interrogated person's hands were tied behind his back and lifted by a rope tied to his hands. Sometimes a log or other weights were attached to his bound legs. At the same time, the arms of the person raised on the rack were turned back and often came out of their joints, so that the convict had to hang on his outstretched arms. They were on the rack from several minutes to an hour or more. This type of rack was used most often in Western Europe
4. In Russia, a suspect raised on the rack was beaten on the back with a whip and “put to the fire,” that is, burning brooms were passed over the body.
5. In some cases, the executioner broke the ribs of a man hanging on a rack with red-hot pincers.
10. Paraffin in the bladder
A savage form of torture, the exact use of which has not been established.
How it works?
1. Candle paraffin was rolled by hand into a thin sausage, which was inserted through the urethra;
2. Paraffin slipped into the bladder, where solid salts and other nasty things began to settle on it.
3. Soon the victim began to have kidney problems and died from acute renal failure. On average, death occurred within 3-4 days.
11. Shiri (camel cap)
A monstrous fate awaited those whom the Ruanzhuans (a union of nomadic Turkic-speaking peoples) took into slavery. They destroyed the slave's memory with a terrible torture - putting a shiri on the victim's head. Usually this fate befell young men captured in battle.
How it works?
1. First, the slaves' heads were shaved bald, and every hair was carefully scraped out at the root.
2. The executors slaughtered the camel and skinned its carcass, first of all, separating its heaviest, dense nuchal part.
3. Having divided the neck into pieces, they immediately pulled it in pairs over the shaved heads of the prisoners. These pieces stuck to the heads of the slaves like a plaster. This meant putting on the shiri.
4. After putting on the shiri, the neck of the doomed person was chained in a special wooden block so that the subject could not touch his head to the ground. In this form, they were taken away from crowded places so that no one would hear their heartbreaking screams, and they were thrown there in an open field, with their hands and feet tied, in the sun, without water and without food.
5. The torture lasted 5 days.
6. Only a few remained alive, and the rest died not from hunger or even from thirst, but from unbearable, inhuman torment caused by drying, shrinking rawhide camel skin on the head. Inexorably shrinking under the rays of the scorching sun, the width squeezed and squeezed the slave's shaved head like an iron hoop. Already on the second day, the shaved hair of the martyrs began to sprout. Coarse and straight Asian hair sometimes grew into the rawhide; in most cases, finding no way out, the hair curled and went back into the scalp, causing even greater suffering. Within a day the man lost his mind. Only on the fifth day did the Ruanzhuans come to check whether any of the prisoners had survived. If at least one of the tortured people was found alive, it was considered that the goal had been achieved. .
7. Anyone who underwent such a procedure either died, unable to withstand the torture, or lost his memory for life, turned into a mankurt - a slave who does not remember his past.
8. The skin of one camel was enough for five or six widths.
12. Implantation of metals
A very strange means of torture and execution was used in the Middle Ages.
How it works?
1. A deep incision was made on a person’s legs, where a piece of metal (iron, lead, etc.) was placed, after which the wound was stitched up.
2. Over time, the metal oxidized, poisoning the body and causing terrible pain.
3. Most often, the poor people tore the skin in the place where the metal was sewn up and died from blood loss.
13. Dividing a person into two parts
This terrible execution originated in Thailand. The most hardened criminals were subjected to it - mostly murderers.
How it works?
1. The accused is placed in a robe woven from vines and stabbed with sharp objects;
2. After this, his body is quickly cut into two parts, the upper half is immediately placed on a red-hot copper grate; This operation stops the bleeding and prolongs the life of most people.
A small addition: This torture is described in the book of the Marquis de Sade “Justine, or the successes of vice.” This is a small excerpt from a large piece of text where de Sade allegedly describes the torture of the peoples of the world. But why supposedly? According to many critics, the Marquis was very fond of lying. He had an extraordinary imagination and a couple of delusions, so this torture, like some others, could have been a figment of his imagination. But this field should not refer to Donatien Alphonse as Baron Munchausen. This torture, in my opinion, if it did not exist before, is quite realistic. If, of course, you pump the person up with painkillers (opiates, alcohol, etc.) so that he doesn’t die before his body touches the bars.
14. Inflating with air through the anus
A terrible torture in which a person is pumped with air through the anus.
There is evidence that in Rus' even Peter the Great himself sinned with this.
Most often, thieves were executed this way.
How it works?
1. The victim was tied hand and foot.
2. Then they took cotton and stuffed it into the poor man’s ears, nose and mouth.
3. Bellows were inserted into his anus, with the help of which a huge amount of air was pumped into the person, as a result of which he became like a balloon.
3. After that, I plugged his anus with a piece of cotton.
4. Then they opened two veins above his eyebrows, from which all the blood flowed out under enormous pressure.
5. Sometimes a bound person was placed naked on the roof of the palace and shot with arrows until he died.
6. Until 1970, this method was often used in Jordanian prisons.
15. Polledro
Neapolitan executioners lovingly called this torture “polledro” - “foal” (polledro) and were proud that it was first used in their hometown. Although history has not preserved the name of its inventor, they said that he was an expert in horse breeding and came up with an unusual device to tame his horses.
Only a few decades later, lovers of making fun of people turned the horse breeder’s device into a real torture machine for people.
The machine was a wooden frame, similar to a ladder, the crossbars of which had very sharp angles, so that when a person was placed on them with his back, they would cut into the body from the back of the head to the heels. The staircase ended with a huge wooden spoon, into which the head was placed, as if in a cap.
How it works?
1. Holes were drilled on both sides of the frame and in the “cap”, and ropes were threaded into each of them. The first of them was tightened on the forehead of the tortured, the last tied the big toes. As a rule, there were thirteen ropes, but for those who were especially stubborn, the number was increased.
2. Using special devices, the ropes were pulled tighter and tighter - it seemed to the victims that, having crushed the muscles, they were digging into the bones.
16. Dead Man's Bed (modern China)


The Chinese Communist Party uses the “dead man’s bed” torture mainly on those prisoners who try to protest against illegal imprisonment through a hunger strike. In most cases, these are prisoners of conscience, imprisoned for their beliefs.
How it works?
1. The arms and legs of a stripped prisoner are tied to the corners of a bed on which, instead of a mattress, there is a wooden board with a hole cut out. A bucket for excrement is placed under the hole. Often, a person’s body is tied tightly to the bed with ropes so that he cannot move at all. A person remains in this position continuously for several days to weeks.
2. In some prisons, such as Shenyang City No. 2 Prison and Jilin City Prison, police also place a hard object under the victim's back to intensify the suffering.
3. It also happens that the bed is placed vertically and the person hangs for 3-4 days, stretched out by his limbs.
4. Added to this torment is force feeding, which is carried out using a tube inserted through the nose into the esophagus, into which liquid food is poured.
5. This procedure is performed mainly by prisoners on the orders of the guards, and not by medical workers. They do this very rudely and unprofessionally, often causing serious damage to a person’s internal organs.
6. Those who have gone through this torture say that it causes displacement of the vertebrae, joints of the arms and legs, as well as numbness and blackening of the limbs, which often leads to disability.
17. Yoke (Modern China)

One of the medieval tortures used in modern Chinese prisons is the wearing of a wooden collar. It is placed on a prisoner, causing him to be unable to walk or stand normally.
The clamp is a board from 50 to 80 cm in length, from 30 to 50 cm in width and 10 – 15 cm in thickness. In the middle of the clamp there are two holes for the legs.
The victim, who is wearing a collar, has difficulty moving, must crawl into bed and usually must sit or lie down, since the upright position causes pain and leads to injury to the legs. Without assistance, a person with a collar cannot go to eat or go to the toilet. When a person gets out of bed, the collar not only puts pressure on the legs and heels, causing pain, but its edge clings to the bed and prevents the person from returning to it. At night the prisoner is unable to turn around, and in winter the short blanket does not cover his legs.
An even worse form of this torture is called “crawling with a wooden clamp.” The guards put a collar on the man and order him to crawl on the concrete floor. If he stops, he is hit on the back with a police baton. An hour later, his fingers, toenails and knees are bleeding heavily, while his back is covered in wounds from the blows.
18. Impalement

A terrible, savage execution that came from the East.
The essence of this execution was that a person was laid on his stomach, one sat on him to prevent him from moving, the other held him by the neck. A stake was inserted into the person's anus, which was then driven in with a mallet; then they drove a stake into the ground. The weight of the body forced the stake to go deeper and deeper and finally it came out under the armpit or between the ribs.
19. Spanish water torture

In order to best carry out the procedure of this torture, the accused was placed on one of the types of racks or on a special large table with a rising middle part. After the victim's arms and legs were tied to the edges of the table, the executioner began work in one of several ways. One of these methods involved forcing the victim to swallow a large amount of water using a funnel, then hitting the distended and arched abdomen. Another form involved placing a cloth tube down the victim's throat through which water was slowly poured, causing the victim to swell and suffocate. If this was not enough, the tube was pulled out, causing internal damage, and then inserted again and the process repeated. Sometimes cold water torture was used. In this case, the accused lay naked on a table under a stream of ice water for hours. It is interesting to note that this type of torture was considered light, and the court accepted confessions obtained in this way as voluntary and given by the defendant without the use of torture. Most often, these tortures were used by the Spanish Inquisition in order to extract confessions from heretics and witches.
20. Chinese water torture
They sat a man in a very cold room, tied him so that he could not move his head, and in complete darkness cold water was very slowly dripped onto his forehead. After a few days the person froze or went crazy.
21. Spanish armchair

This instrument of torture was widely used by the executioners of the Spanish Inquisition and was a chair made of iron, on which the prisoner was seated, and his legs were placed in stocks attached to the legs of the chair. When he found himself in such a completely helpless position, a brazier was placed under his feet; with hot coals, so that the legs began to slowly fry, and in order to prolong the suffering of the poor fellow, the legs were poured with oil from time to time.
Another version of the Spanish chair was often used, which was a metal throne to which the victim was tied and a fire was lit under the seat, roasting the buttocks. The famous poisoner La Voisin was tortured on such a chair during the famous Poisoning Case in France.
22. GRIDIRON (Grid for torture by fire)


Torture of Saint Lawrence on the gridiron.
This type of torture is often mentioned in the lives of saints - real and fictitious, but there is no evidence that the gridiron “survived” until the Middle Ages and had even a small circulation in Europe. It is usually described as an ordinary metal grate, 6 feet long and two and a half feet wide, mounted horizontally on legs to allow a fire to be built underneath.
Sometimes the gridiron was made in the form of a rack in order to be able to resort to combined torture.
Saint Lawrence was martyred on a similar grid.
This torture was used very rarely. Firstly, it was quite easy to kill the person being interrogated, and secondly, there were a lot of simpler, but no less cruel tortures.
23. Pectoral

In ancient times, a pectoral was a female breast decoration in the form of a pair of carved gold or silver bowls, often sprinkled with precious stones. It was worn like a modern bra and secured with chains.
In a mocking analogy with this decoration, the savage instrument of torture used by the Venetian Inquisition was named.
In 1985, the pectoral was heated red-hot and, taking it with tongs, they put it on the tortured woman’s chest and held it until she confessed. If the accused persisted, the executioners heated up the pectoral again cooled by the living body and continued the interrogation.
Very often, after this barbaric torture, charred, torn holes were left in place of the woman’s breasts.
24. Tickle torture

This seemingly harmless effect was a terrible torture. With prolonged tickling, a person's nerve conduction increased so much that even the lightest touch initially caused twitching, laughter, and then turned into terrible pain. If such torture was continued for quite a long time, then after a while spasms of the respiratory muscles occurred and, in the end, the tortured person died from suffocation.
In the simplest version of torture, the interrogated person was tickled in sensitive areas either simply with their hands, or with hair brushes or brushes. Stiff bird feathers were popular. Usually they tickled under the armpits, heels, nipples, inguinal folds, genitals, and women also under the breasts.
In addition, torture was often carried out using animals that licked some tasty substance from the heels of the interrogated person. The goat was very often used, since its very hard tongue, adapted for eating grass, caused very strong irritation.
There was also a type of tickling torture using a beetle, most common in India. With it, a small bug was placed on the head of a man's penis or on a woman's nipple and covered with half a nut shell. After some time, the tickling caused by the movement of insect legs on a living body became so unbearable that the interrogated person confessed to anything
25. Crocodile


These tubular metal crocodile pliers were red-hot and used to tear the penis of the person being tortured. First, with a few caressing movements (often made by women), or with a tight bandage, a persistent, hard erection was achieved and then the torture began
26. Tooth crusher


These serrated iron tongs were used to slowly crush the testicles of the interrogated person.
Something similar was widely used in Stalinist and fascist prisons.
27. Creepy tradition.


Actually, this is not torture, but an African ritual, but, in my opinion, it is very cruel. Girls aged 3-6 years old simply had their external genitalia scraped out without anesthesia.
Thus, the girl did not lose the ability to have children, but was forever deprived of the opportunity to experience sexual desire and pleasure. This ritual is done “for the benefit” of women, so that they will never be tempted to cheat on their husbands
28. Bloody Eagle


One of the most ancient tortures, during which the victim was tied face down and his back was opened, his ribs were broken off at the spine and spread apart like wings. Scandinavian legends claim that during such an execution, the wounds of the victim were sprinkled with salt.
Many historians claim that this torture was used by pagans against Christians, others are sure that spouses caught in treason were punished in this way, and still others claim that the bloody eagle is just a terrible legend.