Medieval T.0.rture Methods Used Inside The WWII Concentration Camps

Within the concentration camps of the Third Reich, there were thousands of brutal and barbaric guards who made the lives of prisoners a complete misery and treated inmates horrifically. The SS ensured that each camp had a reign of terror established over it and that guards were all on the same page, beating and executing if someone had not lived up to their expectations.

Of course, within the barbed wire fences of camps such as Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen, execution was carried out on gallows at roll call, with prisoners being executed in front of thousands to send a horrific message. But there are also accounts of some being burned alive inside of the ovens, while special execution chambers were built to conceal the murderous actions which were taking place.

There was also torture used inside of the camps, with different methods bringing pain and suffering to thousands. Many of these torture methods were medieval and took inspiration from a time centuries ago.

One of the most terrific torture methods used in history was the oubliette, and this was also an execution method as there was little chance of escaping. This was a small and tiny cell or dungeon in which a prisoner would be simply forgotten. They were then left in these prisons which were incredibly cramped and small. One oubliette at Warwick Castle in England saw prisoners locked in one position, unable to stand or crouch, as they were just left to succumb to death with rats also found deep in the dungeon to eat their remains once they died. It was barbaric and psychological torture as well as physical torture.

A variation of this was used inside of the concentration camps. The camp command inside of Dachau established standing cells which were practically oubliettes. These were small chambers made from stone the size of a chimney where a prisoner would be forced to stand for days on end in the cell, unable to crouch or sit down, locked into one position. There was a small hatch for air and sometimes even more than one prisoner was placed inside of these.

One man who suffered the standing cells claimed: “I thought it was over for me. Everything was so callous and distant for me. I could not lie down, could not crouch. The best to do was to stand—stand six days and six nights long. You touch the walls on both sides with your elbows, your back touches a wall behind you, your knees is a wall in front of you. This is no punishment or pre-trial detention; it is torture, straightforward Middle Ages torture. I had bloodshot eyes, numb from bad air. I was just waiting for the end.”

Another prisoner claimed that inside his standing cell, he was given a small piece of bread every three days; on the fourth day, he was taken out of the cell and was given a normal meal before the ordeal then began again. The point of this was punishment, and it was to torture prisoners so they would not infringe on the camp’s rules. They were also found inside of Auschwitz and they were 85 cm square inside of Block 11, inside the barbed wire fences of the deadliest camp, and people were locked in these for around ten days at a time. One man was so desperate in these cells that he allegedly ate his own shoes. It is clear to see that the Nazis got their inspiration for the standing cells from medieval oubliettes, and a number of prisoners would have felt as if they were being forgotten.

The strappado was a torture method used by the Spanish Inquisition in which someone was hanged from their arms which were usually secured behind their backs. This was torture and was said to have lasted no more than an hour, as it would probably result in death if done for much more. The immense pressure on the arms and shoulders would cause long-term damage, and this was done inside of the concentration camps on small little gallows.

Inside of Buchenwald, one guard nicknamed “The Hangman” would inflict this onto prisoners, and the forest was so fraught with screams next to the camp that they became known as the “Singing Forests,” with the prisoners suspended by their wrists which had been tied behind their backs in this form of torture.

Another form of this sort of torture was actually invented by an SS officer, Wilhelm Boger, who worked inside of Auschwitz and was in charge of interrogating prisoners. Boger came up with the “Boger Swing,” an instrument of torture consisting of a meter-long iron bar suspended by chains hung from the ceiling.

A prisoner would be brought in for questioning, stripped naked, and bent over the bar with wrists manacled to ankles. A guard at one side would shove him or her off across the chamber in a long, slow arc while Boger would ask the questions—at first quietly, then barking them out, and at the last bellowing. At each return, another guard armed with a crowbar would smash the victim across the buttocks. As the swinging went on and on and the wailing victim fainted, they were revived only to faint howling again. The blows continued until only a mass of bleeding pulp hung before their eyes. Most perished from the ordeal, some sooner, some later. In the end, a sack of bones and flesh and fat were swept along the shambles of that concrete floor to be dragged away.

The Boger Swing was similar to that of the strappado; they involved someone being suspended off the floor, but with the swing, the prisoner was secured by their ankles and was secured to a bar, then batted by other guards using horrific, deadly weapons.

Another method of punishment but also torture was flogging, in which a prisoner would be taken to a flogging post, secured to it, and then whipped and beaten with different items. Inside of Auschwitz, prisoners were flogged publicly during evening roll call over a special device which was known as “The Goat.”

In the main camp, prisoners were flogged in the courtyard of Block 11 and a prisoner’s feet were locked inside the wooden goat. They were then stretched out towards the guards. The SS men or the Kapos, or prisoner functionaries, were the ones who administered the flogging using weapons such as sticks or bullwhips. The prisoner had to count the number of blows in German, and if they lost count, then the punishment began all over again.

The amount of strikes the prisoner could receive varied on their crime and also on how the guard was feeling at the time, but it was the sort of punishment that was so brutal it could result in death. The highest number was meant to be 25 strikes or whips, and this was known to have been fatal itself. But this was a medieval punishment and torture method, and floggings were often done in towns and cities centuries ago to show people not to commit crimes which were considered serious. They were often used as a way to deter the public from certain activities, and inside of the camps, they also had this purpose.

Often considered to have been one of the lesser torture methods, the manacles were also incredibly painful. They were shackles in which someone would be suspended from their arms in the air, often very high, and this caused a huge amount of strain on the arms. It was different from the strappado as the arms were not tied behind the back, but they were used in medieval and subsequent centuries very often.

One prisoner who was subjected to this in the Tudor period during the reign of Elizabeth I at the Tower of London said of the manacles: “Then they put my wrists into iron gauntlets and ordered me to climb two or three wicker steps. My arms were then lifted up and an iron bar was passed through the rings of one gauntlet, then through the staple and the ring of the second gauntlet. This done, they fastened the bar with a pin to prevent it slipping. Then, removing the wicker steps, they left me hanging by my hands with my arms fastened above my head.”

This was also used inside of the torture chambers in the concentration camps, with the Gestapo often using the manacles as a way of getting information out of the prisoners who they believed were involved in resistance activities. These torture blocks, such as Block 11 in Auschwitz, became known for their evil antics that occurred inside the walls, and the commandants of these camps became known for sanctioning torture; it was almost a daily occurrence.

As per the medieval period and before, prisoners who were said to have not been compliant with torture were often executed in different ways as they were considered a lost cause. Inside of the concentration camps, there was a huge amount of suffering and slaughter, and torture was dished out more by guards than food was. Violence was the order of the day at the hands of the SS. If a prisoner did not work hard enough, then they could be brutalized in many different ways.

The concentration camps utilized different torture methods that had been documented and recorded throughout the centuries, and the SS and the Nazis saw these as effective ways of extracting information from prisoners. It added to the reign of terror of camps and the barbarism of what went on inside sites such as Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Dachau.