How did the NKVD departments extract the necessary testimony from women? Torture in the NKVD which was appreciated in Germany

**************************************

The story contains scenes of torture, violence, sex. If this offends your tender soul, don’t read, but get the fuck out of here!

**************************************

The plot takes place during the Great Patriotic War. In the territory occupied by the Nazis it operates partisan detachment. The fascists know that there are many women among the partisans, just how to identify them. Finally they managed to catch the girl Katya when she was trying to sketch a diagram of the location of German firing points...

The captive girl was brought into small room at the school where the Gestapo station was now located. A young officer interrogated Katya. Besides him, there were several policemen and two vulgar-looking women in the room. Katya knew them, they served the Germans. I just didn’t fully know how.

The officer instructed the guards holding the girl to release her, which they did. He motioned for her to sit down. The girl sat down. The officer ordered one of the girls to bring tea. But Katya refused. The officer took a sip, then lit a cigarette. He offered it to Katya, but she refused. The officer started a conversation, and he spoke Russian quite well.

What is your name?

Katerina.

I know that you were engaged in intelligence work for the communists. This is true?

But you are so young, so beautiful. You probably ended up in their service by accident?

No! I am a Komsomol member and I want to become a communist, like my father, Hero Soviet Union who died at the front.

I'm sorry I'm so young beautiful girl I fell for the red-ass bait. At one time, my father served in the Russian army in the first world war. He commanded a company. He has many glorious victories and awards to his name. But when the communists came to power, for all his services to his homeland he was accused of being an enemy of the people and shot. My mother and I faced starvation, like the children of enemies of the people, but one of the Germans (who was a prisoner of war and whose father did not allow us to be shot) helped us escape to Germany and even enlist in the service. I always wanted to be a hero like my father. And now I have arrived to save my homeland from the communists.

You are a fascist bitch, an invader, a killer of innocent people...

We never kill innocent people. On the contrary, we are returning to them what the red-assed people took from them. Yes, we recently hanged two women who set fire to houses where our soldiers temporarily settled. But the soldiers managed to run out, and the owners lost the last thing that the war did not take away from them.

They fought against...

Your people!

Not true!

Okay, let us be invaders. You are now required to answer several questions. After that, we will determine your punishment.

I won't answer your questions!

Okay, then name with whom you are organizing terrorist attacks against German soldiers.

Not true. We've been watching you.

Then why should I answer?

So that innocent people don't get hurt.

I won't tell you anyone...

Then I will invite the boys to untie your stubborn tongue.

Nothing will work out for you!

We'll see about that later. So far there has not been a single case out of 15 and nothing has worked out for us... Let's get to work, boys!

At "The human beast factor": 22 methods of torture by the NKVD

1. Torture with cigarettes. Using human skin as an ashtray was a very painful procedure that delighted the ears of the executioners with the loud screams of the victim.

2. Pinched nails. The fingers were placed in special devices.

3. A beating that left no traces. They beat the defendants with rulers, sandbags, and galoshes on the male genitals.

4. Torture by insects. They could have locked him in a box with bedbugs, or they could have tied him up and put him on an anthill.

5. Sound torture. The victim was forced to answer all questions loudly. Or they would come close and shout in your ear, sometimes using a megaphone. Loud sounds could cause you to lose your hearing and even drive you crazy.

6. Torture with light. The camera was always on very bright lighting. The same bright light was directed into the face of the person under investigation during interrogations. The eyes watered, the consciousness became foggy, the speech became untied.

7. Torture by starvation. After 10-15 days of forced starvation, the prisoner was ready for almost anything.

8. Torture by thirst. Here the victim could even be fed - but always with very salty food, so he wanted to drink even more.

9. Torture by insomnia. In its effect, this was reminiscent of light torture and could be used in conjunction with it. Hallucinations and headaches began.

10. A series of interrogations. The person was constantly pulled, interrogated, taken away for questioning and brought back. The person was constantly in an anxious state, nervous and sooner or later broke down.

11. Swallow. The victim was threaded through the teeth (like a horse bridle) through the middle of the piece. durable fabric, and the ends were tied to the legs. As a result, neither move nor scream.

12. Short circuit in a cabinet or drawer. Several hours of being in a cramped closed box, in which one could either only stand or only sit, had an effect on the victims no worse than beating and screaming.

13. Closure in a niche. In a niche, a person, as a rule, felt not just closed in, but practically walled up alive.

14. Locked in a punishment cell. These prison premises were very low temperature, and often dampness and knee-deep water were added to the cold. Three to five days in a punishment cell could ruin a person’s health for life. But after 10-15 days spent in a punishment cell, people usually lived no more than a month.

15. Pit. The prisoner could not only be placed in a closed space.

16. Sump. Several dozen people were locked in a cramped room (“sump”). The prisoners stood close together, and if one of them died (and this happened often), the corpse could stand in the crowd for several days.

17. "Chair". The victim was forced to sit on a chair over a board with nails.

18. Stool. The person was sat on a stool and not allowed to move for several hours. If a person moved, they beat him, if he sat motionless, his legs and back began to numb and begin to hurt.

19. Kneeling torture. Several days of kneeling in front of investigators or guards gave not only physical activity, but also put pressure on the psyche.

20. Standing torture. Force the defendant to stand all the time, not allowing him to lean against the wall, sit down, or fall asleep.

21. Torture by children. They put a child in front of the woman (either hers, or someone else’s, but then small) and began to torture. Children's fingers and arms were broken.

22. Torture by rape. A fairly standard version of torturing women. Sometimes the victim was placed in a cell with criminals.

According to the recollections of former prisoners of the investigative prison known as “Sukhanovka” or Special Object No. 110, 52 types of torture were used there. In 1938, the prison was equipped on the premises of the St. Catherine's Monastery in the Moscow region. A detailed list of “methods” that were used to obtain the testimony the authorities needed was compiled in the book “Sukhanovskaya Prison. Special object 110” historian, Gulag researcher Lidia Golovkova.

NKVD torture

The most simple method, which was used in a torture prison, there were beatings of prisoners, the researcher writes. They could beat people for days without a break, in shifts - the investigators changed each other, working tirelessly. Another fairly common way of obtaining testimony at that time was the insomnia test: the prisoner could be subjected to 10-20 days of for a long time deprive one of sleep.

The executioners also had more sophisticated means in their arsenal. During the interrogation, the victim was placed on the leg of a stool in such a way that with any movement of the defendant, it entered the rectum. Another method of torture was the “swallow” - the prisoners’ head and legs were tied through the back with a long towel. This is impossible to endure, but people were kept in this state for hours.

The ingenuity of sadistic investigators can be compared with the sophisticated fantasy of movie maniacs. People had pins stuck under their nails and their fingers slammed into doors. Victims of terror were put in so-called “salotopki” - punishment cells, where they supported high temperature. They tortured prisoners in barrels of cold water. The interrogator could fill the decanter with his own urine and force the victim to drink.

There is practically no evidence that anyone withstood inhuman torture. Experienced soldiers were broken in prisons. General Sidyakin went crazy after the torture: Golovkova writes that he began to howl and bark like a dog. After interrogation, many were sent for compulsory treatment to psychiatric hospitals. According to documents, there is one case where a prisoner survived in a special institution and withstood torture. Mikhail Kedrov, a former security officer who complained about abuses in the authorities, went through a torture prison without confessing to the charges. This helped him at trial - he was acquitted. True, he failed to escape Stalin’s executioners: after the start of the Great Patriotic War he was shot without resuming the investigation on the orders of Lavrentiy Beria.

Killer cars

The State Security Commissioner often personally abused the victims. Before executing prisoners, he ordered his henchmen to beat them. Before leaving for the next world, the prisoner had to be “punched in the face,” apparently this gave Stalin’s chief executioner some special pleasure. Lavrentiy Beria appeared personally at the special facility; in prison he had his own office, from which a personal elevator descended to the torture rooms.

There are also examples when Nazi executioners used the experience of their Soviet “colleagues”. The NKVD came up with special paddy wagons that were real killing machines. The exhaust pipe in them was directed inside, the prisoners died during transportation, and the bodies of the dead were immediately taken to the crematorium. The Nazis used this method in concentration camps.

Just as no classification in nature has rigid partitions, so in torture we will not be able to clearly separate mental from physical methods. Where, for example, should we include the following methods:

"1) Sound method. Place the defendant six or eight meters away and force him to speak loudly and repeat. This is not easy for an already exhausted person. Or make two megaphones out of cardboard and, together with a fellow investigator who has approached, approach the prisoner closely, shout in both ears: “Confess, you bastard!” The prisoner becomes stunned and sometimes loses his hearing. But this is an uneconomical method, it’s just that investigators also want to have fun in their monotonous work, so they come up with something to do.

2) Extinguish the cigarette on the skin of the person under investigation.

3) Light method. Sharp 24/7 electric light in the cell or box where the prisoner is kept, there is an excessively bright light bulb for the small room and white walls. The eyelids become inflamed, it is very painful. And in the investigative office, room spotlights are again directed at him.

4) Such an idea: Chebotarev on the night of May 1, 1933 in the Khabarovsk GPU all night, twelve hours - they were not interrogated, no: they were taken for interrogation! So-and-so - hands back! They took me out of the cell quickly up the stairs to the investigator’s office. The hatchling has left. But the investigator, not only without asking a single question, but sometimes without even allowing Chebotarev to sit down, picks up the phone: take him away from 107! They take him and bring him to a cell. As soon as he lay down on the bunk, the castle rattled: Chebotarev! For interrogation! Hands back! And there: take it from 107th! In general, methods of influence can begin long before the investigative office.

5) Prison begins with a box, that is, a box or closet. A person who has just been captured from freedom, still in the summer of his inner movement, ready to find out, argue, fight, is slammed into a box at the very first prison step, sometimes with a light bulb and where he can sit, sometimes dark and such that he can only stand, still crushed by the door. And they keep him here for several hours, half a day, a day. Hours of complete uncertainty! - maybe he is walled up here for life? He has never seen anything like this in his life, he can’t guess! His first hours are passing, when everything in him is still burning from the unstoppable spiritual whirlwind. Some lose heart - this is where they should do their first interrogation! Others become embittered - so much the better, they will now insult the investigator, commit negligence - and it will be easier to screw up the case for them.

6) When there weren’t enough boxes, they did the same thing: Elena Strutinskaya in the Novocherkassk NKVD was put on a stool in the corridor for six days - so that she wouldn’t lean against anything, wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t fall or get up. This is for six days! Would you try sitting for six hours? Again, as an option, you can sit the prisoner on a high chair, like a laboratory one, so that his feet do not reach the floor. They numb well then. Let it sit for eight to ten hours. Otherwise, during the interrogation, when the prisoner is in full view, sit him on an ordinary chair, but like this: on the very tip, on the rib of the seat (still forward! still forward!), so that he doesn’t fall over, but so that the rib presses painfully on him the whole interrogation. And do not allow him to move for several hours. That's all? Yes, that's all. Try it.

7) According to local conditions, boxing can be replaced by a divisional pit, as was the case in the Gorokhovets army camps during the Great Patriotic War. The arrested person falls into such a hole, three meters deep, two meters in diameter, and there for several days under open air, for an hour and in the rain, there was both a cell and a restroom for him. And three hundred grams of bread and water were lowered there to him on a string. Imagine yourself in this position, and even just arrested, when everything is bubbling inside you...

8) Force the defendant to kneel - not in some figurative sense, but literally: on his knees and so that he does not sit on his heels, but keeps his back straight. In an investigator's office or in a corridor, you can make someone stand like that for twelve, or twenty-four, or forty-eight hours. (The investigator himself can go home, sleep, have fun, this is a developed system: a post is placed on a person’s knees, guards are replaced. (Who is good to post like this? Already broken, already inclined to surrender. It’s good to post women like this. Ivanov-Razumnik reports on an option this method: having put young Lordkipanidze on his knees, the investigator pissed himself in his face! And what? Not taken by anything else, Lordkipanidze was broken by this. This means that it works well on the proud too...

9) Otherwise it’s so easy to make him stand. It is possible to stand only during interrogations, this also tires and breaks you. You can put him in prison during interrogations, but he must stand from interrogation to interrogation (the warden makes sure that he does not lean against the wall, and if he falls asleep and falls, he kicks and lifts him up). Sometimes even a day of endurance is enough for a person to become weak and show anything.

10) In all these stays, people are usually not allowed to drink for three, four or five days. The combination of psychological and physical techniques is becoming increasingly clear. It is clear that all the previous measures are combined with (11) insomnia, which was not at all appreciated by the Middle Ages: it did not know about the narrowness of the range in which a person retains his personality. Insomnia (and even combined with perseverance, thirst, bright light, fear and the unknown - what is your torture?) clouds the mind, undermines the will, a person ceases to be his “I”...

12) In development of the previous one - an investigative conveyor. Not only do you not sleep, but you are continuously interrogated by shift investigators for three to four days.

13) Punishment cells. No matter how bad it is in the cell, the punishment cell is always worse, from there the cell always seems like paradise. In a punishment cell, a person is exhausted by hunger and usually cold (there are also hot punishment cells in Sukhanovka). For example, the Lefortovo punishment cells are not heated at all, the radiators heat only the corridor, and in this “heated” corridor the guards on duty wear felt boots and a padded jacket. The prisoner is stripped down to his underwear, and sometimes down to just his underpants, and he must remain motionless (crowded) in the punishment cell for a day, three, five (hot gruel only on the third day). In the first minutes you think: I won’t last even an hour. But by some miracle, a person survives his five days, perhaps acquiring a disease for life. There are different types of punishment cells: dampness, water. After the war, Masha G. was kept barefoot and ankle-deep in icy water in a Chernivtsi prison for two hours - admit it! (She was eighteen years old, how sorry she still was for her legs and how much longer she had to live with them!).

14) Should standing locking in a niche be considered a type of punishment cell? Already in 1933, in the Khabarovsk GPU they tortured S. A. Chebotarev in this way: they locked him naked in a concrete niche so that he could not bend his knees, nor straighten and move his arms, nor turn his head. That's not all! Started dripping onto the top of my head cold water(how textbook!..) and spread throughout the body in streams. Of course, they didn’t tell him that it was only for twenty-four hours... It was scary, not scary - but he lost consciousness, they discovered him the next day as if he was dead, he woke up in a hospital bed. They brought him to his senses ammonia, caffeine, body massage. It took him a long time to remember where it came from, what happened the day before. For a whole month he became unfit even for interrogation.

15) Hunger. This is not such a rare way: to starve a prisoner out of a confession. Actually, the element of hunger entered into the general system of influence.

16) Beating that leaves no marks. They beat me with rubber bands, they beat me with mallets, and they beat me with sandbags. It is very painful when they hit the bones, for example, with an investigator’s boot on the shin, where the bone is almost on the surface. Brigade commander Karpunich-Braven was beaten for twenty-one days in a row. (Now he says: “And after thirty years all my bones and my head hurt”). Remembering his own and from stories, he counts fifty-two torture methods. Or here’s another way: they clamp their hands in a special device - so that the defendant’s palms lie flat on the table - and then they hit the joints with the edge of a ruler - you can scream! Should I distinguish between beatings and knocking out teeth? (Karpunich was knocked out eight). As everyone knows, a punch to the solar plexus, taking your breath away, does not leave the slightest trace. Lefortovo Colonel Sidorov, after the war, used a free blow of galoshes on the hanging male appendages (football players who received a ball in the groin can appreciate this blow). There is no comparison with this pain, and one usually loses consciousness.

17) The Novorossiysk NKVD invented nail clipping machines. Many Novorossiysk residents later saw peeled nails during transit.

18) And what about the straitjacket?

19) And bridling (“swallow”)? This is Sukhanov’s method, but Arkhangelsk prison also knows it (investigator Ivkov, 1940). A long, harsh towel is placed over your mouth (bridling), and then tied over your back with the ends to your heels. Just like that, with a wheel on your belly, with a crunchy back, without water or food, lie down for two days. Do I need to list further? Is there too much more to list?”

20) But the worst thing they can do to you is: strip you from the waist down, put you on your back on the floor, spread your legs, and your assistants (glorious sergeants) will sit on them, holding you by the hands.

The simplest method used in the torture prison was beating prisoners, the researcher writes. They could beat people for days without a break, in shifts - the investigators changed each other, working tirelessly. Another fairly common way of obtaining evidence at that time was the insomnia test: the prisoner could be deprived of sleep for a long time for 10 - 20 days.

The executioners also had more sophisticated means in their arsenal. During the interrogation, the victim was placed on the leg of a stool in such a way that with any movement of the defendant, it entered the rectum. Another method of torture was the “swallow” - the prisoners’ head and legs were tied through the back with a long towel. It is impossible to endure this, but people were kept in this state for hours. [C-BLOCK]

The ingenuity of sadistic investigators can be compared with the sophisticated fantasy of movie maniacs. People had pins stuck under their nails and their fingers slammed into doors. Victims of terror were put in so-called “salotopki” - punishment cells where the temperature was maintained at a high temperature. They also tortured prisoners in barrels of cold water. The interrogator could fill the decanter with his own urine and force the victim to drink.

There is practically no evidence that anyone withstood inhuman torture. Experienced soldiers were broken in prisons. General Sidyakin went crazy after the torture: Golovkova writes that he began to howl and bark like a dog. After interrogation, many were sent for compulsory treatment to psychiatric hospitals. According to documents, there is one case where a prisoner survived in a special institution and withstood torture. Mikhail Kedrov, a former security officer who complained about abuses in the authorities, went through a torture prison without confessing to the charges. This helped him at trial - he was acquitted. True, he failed to escape Stalin’s executioners: after the start of the Great Patriotic War, he was shot without resuming the investigation by order of Lavrentiy Beria.

Killer cars