What torture devices were used in Nazi Concentration camp?

Answer 1

There is a widely held, but mistaken view that the Nazis made extensive use of fiendishly ingenious torture devices. In concentration camps the guards most commonly beat inmates - sometimes with their fists and sometimes with various implements ranging from whips to cudgels and long, heavy crowbars.

Sometimes the guards pushed prisoners to the ground and kicked them black and blue with their heavy jackboots (which were a bit like heavy 'goth' boots), smashed their teeth, and so on.

However, actual torture differed from camp to camp. Mengele, the "Angel of Death", did indeed commit vile experiments on select inmates -- with a particular fixation on identical twins, dwarfs, and genetically inferior persons. These experiments included: -Hurting a twin and gauging the other twins' reaction -Removing body parts to test the survival time of the patient -Testing new, unfounded surgery techniques (supposedly without anasthesia -- debated by some historians) -Using saltwater and electricity to gauge the pain response of the human body These means did became the most infamous torture techniques in the Nazi regime.

However, general torture of the inmates is pretty much easy to imagine -- whipping; random killing or maiming; rape; defamation and degradation of the person's rights; many torture techniques that the Nazi prison guards (and even some prison inmates who themselves practised torture) can be found in modern day camps. Some of the SS men did a little reading on the Inquisition ... Bullies are seldom original. However, they didn't have time for elaborate 'torture devices'.

At Auschwitz they sometimes unleashed hungry dogs on the prisoners.

One of the more common tortures used in some Nazi camps involved tying an inmate's wrists securely behind the back and them suspending him (or her) for anything from 30 minutes to a few hours. The pain and the effect on the muscles and joints can easily be imagined. It was horrific.

An interesting early account of life in a concentration camp is: Eugen Kogon, The Theory and Practice of Hell. (Various publishers). Eugen Kogon was a prisoner at Buchenwald from 1939 till the camp was liberated in 1945. He was immensely resilient and wrote most of the book in 1945-46. Part of it was used in evidence by the prosecution at Nuremberg.

As Jean Amery (anagram and pen-name of Hans Mayer) observed, there was a fundamental sense in which torture - a sadistic and fundamental attack on the whole person - lay at the very heart of Nazism, with its bottomless contempt for civilization, morality and human life.

Answer 2

There were countless improvised tourture devices, but the main built in devices were the standing cells, where many inmates were forced into a cell too small for them to sit, or the suffocating cells which allowed a limited amount of air.

Answer 3

People must remember that the Germans did not have a lot of time to just torture the prisoners in the camps. They had work to get done and the war to finish. They, of course, packed people into trains and trucks to move them to the camps. They would also force some of them to walk long distances to the camps. They were not fed nor were any sick ones taken care of. Those that died were left behind. Once they got to the camps, they were packed into barracks. These were not heated. There was little or no food or health care. The people were told to remove their clothing, shoes, jewelry, eye glasses and the women had their hair cut off. They were given a sort of uniform made of cheap cloth. They were then sorted. Women and men and children. Those strong enough to work, were sent on work details and worked to death as slave labor. The children were sent straight to the ovens along with the sick and elderly.

Answer 4

Electric nipple shock