While I read the first two chapters in their entirety, I only read chapter 3 and skimmed chapters 4 and 5.
The non physical methods used by the interrogators are pretty much standard police procedure today, the lying, the taking quotes out of context, the twisting of words, the false promises, all of it is used by prosecutors across the US. From page 103 Solzhenitsyn starts a list of the different ways interrogators can psychologically abuse prisoners.
Night
Persuasion
Abusive language
Psychological Contrast
Preliminary humiliation
Confusion
Intimidation
Outright lies
Threatening family
Loud Noises
Tickling
A cigarette
Light effects
14-19. Stress Positions
Dehydration
Sleep Deprivation
22-25. More stress Positions
Starvation
27+ Beatings and more Stress Postiions.
And of course this all begins during the arrest. Of this list the only ones that are not employed by the US government today, are numbers 11, 12, 20, and 26. (at least as far as I know). Ordinary police use stress potions as immediate physical compliance, eg. take downs. The remainder, are present in virtually every arrest. Remember the arrest of Roger Stone? It used numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, and probably more. And that was just the arrest.
As ever, never talk to the police.
On page 145 we again see that communist are far, far worse than Nazis:
The Gestapo accused him of Communist activities among Russian workers in Germany, and the MGB charged him with having ties to the international bourgeoisie. Divnich's verdict was unfavorable to the MGB. He was tortured by both, but the Gestapo was nonetheless trying to get at the truth. and when the accusation did not hold up. Divnich was released. The MGB wasn't interested in the truth and had no intention of letting anyone out of its grip once he was arrested.
The Nazis actually released him when they determined that he wasn't a commie. The commies of course don't care, they are on the "right side of history." Similarly, but not from this book, Witold Pilecki said to his wife during his trial in Poland after the war, paraphrased: Auschwitz was nothing compared to the Gulag. (This has been scrubbed from the internet.) Both of these taken together along with what we learned last week regarding "boxes of soap" really show that the Soviets, like all leftist, project. Every one of their accusations against Germany were actions they were undertaking.
On page 175 we can see the propaganda work even on someone who has suffed from the system. Solzhenitsyn says:
In that same period, by 1966, eighty-six thousand Nazi criminals had been convicted in West Germany. And still we choke with anger here. We do not hesitate to devote to the subject page after newspaper page and hour after hour of radio time. We even stay after work to attend protest meetings and vote: "Too few! Eighty-six thousand are too few. And twenty years is too little! It must go on and on."
Yet Solzhenitsyn does not consider the possibility that the other allied powers also used torture to get the convictions they wanted. Pretty much every Nazi officer that confessed was tortured. For instance: https://archive.md/CkEbO#selection-1229.0-1229.323
Of the 21 accused, 14 were hanged after a war-crimes trial in Hamburg. Many confessed only after being interrogated by Scotland and his men. In court, they protested that they had been starved, whipped and systematically beaten. Some said they had been menaced with red-hot pokers and ‘threatened with electrical devices’.
Such nobility, when you can't tell the difference between Comintern and NATO. But as always, it is only a warcrime if you lose.
But the most awful thing they can do with you is this: undress you from the. waist down, place you on your back on the floor, pull your legs apart, seat assistants on them (from the glorious corps of sergeants!) who also hold down your arms; and then the interrogator (and women interrogators have not shrunk from this) stands between your legs and with the toe of his boot (or of her shoe) gradually, steadily, and with ever greater pressure crushes against the floor those organs which once made you a man. He looks into your eyes and repeats and repeats his questions or the betrayal he is urging on you. If he does not press down too quickly or just a shade too powerfully, you still have fifteen seconds left in which to scream that you will confess to everything, that you are ready to see arrested all twenty of those people he's been demanding of you, or that you will slander in the newspapers everything you hold holy ....
And may you be judged by God, but not by people ....
pg. 127-128
Cock and ball torture from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia…
Or, for example, that colonel, Konkordiya losse's friend, who had roared with laughter in the Vladimir Detention Prison at the memory of locking up a group of old Jews in an ice-filled root cellar, had been afraid of one thing only during all his debaucheries: that his wife might find out about them. She believed in him, regarded him as noble, and this faith of hers was precious to him. But do we dare accept that feeling as a bridgehead to virtue in his heart?
pg. 172
I was wondering if you’d bring this up in relation to the doctor’s plot. I couldn’t help to wonder if his wife’s view of him wouldn’t be the only thing he’d need to worry about.
While I read the first two chapters in their entirety, I only read chapter 3 and skimmed chapters 4 and 5.
The non physical methods used by the interrogators are pretty much standard police procedure today, the lying, the taking quotes out of context, the twisting of words, the false promises, all of it is used by prosecutors across the US. From page 103 Solzhenitsyn starts a list of the different ways interrogators can psychologically abuse prisoners.
Night
Persuasion
Abusive language
Psychological Contrast
Preliminary humiliation
Confusion
Intimidation
Outright lies
Threatening family
Loud Noises
Tickling
A cigarette
Light effects
14-19. Stress Positions
Dehydration
Sleep Deprivation
22-25. More stress Positions
27+ Beatings and more Stress Postiions.
And of course this all begins during the arrest. Of this list the only ones that are not employed by the US government today, are numbers 11, 12, 20, and 26. (at least as far as I know). Ordinary police use stress potions as immediate physical compliance, eg. take downs. The remainder, are present in virtually every arrest. Remember the arrest of Roger Stone? It used numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, and probably more. And that was just the arrest.
As ever, never talk to the police.
On page 145 we again see that communist are far, far worse than Nazis:
The Nazis actually released him when they determined that he wasn't a commie. The commies of course don't care, they are on the "right side of history." Similarly, but not from this book, Witold Pilecki said to his wife during his trial in Poland after the war, paraphrased: Auschwitz was nothing compared to the Gulag. (This has been scrubbed from the internet.) Both of these taken together along with what we learned last week regarding "boxes of soap" really show that the Soviets, like all leftist, project. Every one of their accusations against Germany were actions they were undertaking.
On page 175 we can see the propaganda work even on someone who has suffed from the system. Solzhenitsyn says:
Yet Solzhenitsyn does not consider the possibility that the other allied powers also used torture to get the convictions they wanted. Pretty much every Nazi officer that confessed was tortured. For instance: https://archive.md/CkEbO#selection-1229.0-1229.323
Such nobility, when you can't tell the difference between Comintern and NATO. But as always, it is only a warcrime if you lose.
Cock and ball torture from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia…
I was wondering if you’d bring this up in relation to the doctor’s plot. I couldn’t help to wonder if his wife’s view of him wouldn’t be the only thing he’d need to worry about.