Torture chamber encyclopedia topics

Torture chambers through 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. Torture chambers were also used during the Spanish Inquisition and at the Tower of London.

Torture chambers in modern times

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. These regimes have also used torture chambers. 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.

Europe

Use of torture chambers was also reported in Europe during the Greek military junta years. Alexandros Panagoulis and Tagmatarkhis Spyros Moustaklis are examples of persons tortured at the EAT/ESA (Greek Military Police) interrogation cell units. Another example of a torture chamber, not known by many, is "The Thieves Tower" in the Alsace region of France. Once a tower used for torture, it is now a small museum displaying instruments used upon the prisoners to get them to confess crimes.

Culture

Literature

In George Orwell's famous novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, Room 101 is a torture chamber.

In Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera, Erik (the Phantom's) chamber of torture consisted of a hexagonal room lined with mirrors on each wall. Temperatures vary inside the room, and soon, without food or water, people trapped in there begin having hallucinations. There is an iron tree in there with a lasso under it with which one can commit suicide, which is the only way out.

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 (1961).

List of chamber related films

Chamber of horrors is a 1966 B-movie classic.
Hostel is a 2006 movie
Cell zero A movie about the Greek Military Police torture chambers
The Saw series

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. Also Torture Chamber is a song by hip hop artist Edan from his 2005 album Beauty and the Beat.