According to Reuters a collection of very old torture devices will be sold at auction. Excerpt:
"It's almost what's your pleasure, what part of the body would you like to hurt, which is a terrible thing to say," Ettinger said of the devices. "As brutal as these things are, it's history and if these items get dispersed that would be gone."
The collections includes items like an arm clamp with spikes, a chair with spikes, heavy iron masks, and a metal mitten that could be made red hot in a fire and then put on someone's hand.
Ettinger said the collection was exhibited in Britain and the United States in the late 19th century. It was eventually bought by a Norwegian Holocaust survivor living in the United States in the 1950s and is now being sold by heirs.
Makes water-boarding seem tame. The problem with historical torture was that the people who performed it seemed to be doing it for some weird purposes. Extracting life saving information is a slightly more acceptable purpose, but it's still creepy.
Via Dangerous Meta.
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