Torture chamber
A Torture chamber is a place where torture is carried out.
Context
The Torture chamber is the place where Torture occured and as such it provides the context for Torture. It is the physical evidence that torture took place long after the perpetrator and the victims have ceased to exist. As such it is powerful evidence of the existence of Torture and it is almost independent of time. Chambers are powerful historical evidence because they last for a very long time. The chambers of Auschwitz are such an example.
Psychology
Torture chambers have been used by many through the ages as a means and a place to torture and to intimidate the victims of torture. Such usage is based on the fact that a torture chamber is a formidable psychological weapon. The reason is that normally a room is a space where normal social activities are carried out. That makes it a familiar and sometimes intimate place for normal social exchanges. The room, however, if used in a torture context becomes a horrible place, because instead of being surrounded by normal people pursuing their normal business, the victim is found, in close quarters with a person that is a torturer. This closeness can be described as perverted intimacy. This reversal of the meaning of intimacy is at the heart of the horror value of the torture chamber. Being in a room with a person that is identified as a torturer is therefore horrifying on its own merits apart from the presence or absence of physical pain.
Users of torture chambers
The torture chamber has been used by many social and political entities through the ages. Torture chamber users range from the simply insane all the way to complex social structures such as groups, even governments.
A government is, by definition, a political structure that is supposed to serve society. Yet some dictatorial governments have used torture chambers, a profoundly antisocial behaviour, as a means of advancing their social, political and even religious agendas against the will of their own societies. This paradoxical use arises from the fact that by definition a dictatorship does not keep a social contract with society.
Torture chambers in earlier History
Throughout history torture chambers have been used in a multiplicity of ways starting from Roman times. Torture chamber use during the Middle Ages was frequent. Religious, social and political persecution led to the widespread use of torture during that time. Almost always, torture was, and still is, carried out in an enclosed environment such as a a cell or a chamber. Inside the chamber the victim becomes isolated and helpless. So even in the absence of a torturer or the act of torture, being confined this way makes the victim suffer. The torture chamber, therefore, can become an instrument of torture. Torture chambers were also used during the Spanish Inquisition and at the Tower of London.[1]
Torture chambers in dictatorships
Nazi Germany and South America
The traditional torture users of modern times have been dictatorship governments, such as, for example, the Nazis and the Chilean dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet as well as other South American regimes.[2] These regimes have used and even introduced, or significantly expanded the use of, a wide variety of torture methods. These include but are not limited to: Disappearances, (a Pinochet speciality also used by the Nazis), and use of torture chambers.[3][4] The isolation felt inside the Nazi torture chambers was so strong that author, and victim, K. Zetnik, during his testimony at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1961, has described them as another galaxy.
Chamber use in other countries
In the recent past use of torture chambers was adopted by other countries as well. In Europe the Ioannides junta is the prime example of a European importer of such methods. Only after the Ioannides prescribed treatment for Greece failed, the regime change of metapolitefsi became possible in Greece.
George Papadopoulos is on record refering to a medical analogy during his tenure in power. In many press conferences, Papadopoulos delighted in using the patient in a cast analogy to describe his assault on the body politic of Greece. He used to say that he put the patient (Greece) in a cast so that they could fix her ailments.
He forgot to mention that the treatment was involuntary.
Culture
Film
In film the torture chamber is also known as the chamber of horrors with the word horror implying torture as well as murder or a combination of both. A good example is the torture chamber depicted in the classic horror film the Pit and the Pendulum. Sometimes the chamber gets enlarged to become a store as in the movie Little Shop of Horrors. Other times it may even be a Mansion.
List of chamber related films
- Chamber of horrors is a 1966 B-movie classic.
- Hostel is a 2006 movie
Cultural resonance
Aside from its dictionary definition the term has great cultural resonance, because it transforms an abstract concept (Torture) into a real place (Torture chamber), and is an integral part of pop culture. Related exhibits can also be found in places such as Niagara Falls, Las Vegas etc., attracting millions of tourists each year.
Cited references
- ^ Torquemada and the Spanish Inqusition:Chapter 3. The water cure. by Anthony Bruno. From Crime Library.com
- ^ Fort Breendonk (Nazi Camp): Pictorial essay. Mentions local torture chamber
- ^ Torture chamber: behind Pinochet's reign of terror. Christian Century, Jan 11, 2005 by Kenneth P. Serbin
- ^ Nuremberg Trials Opening Address for the United States Robert Jackson statement: (Nazi) Germany became one vast torture chamber