Torture Devices Seeking Righteous Buyer
Torture Devices Seeking Righteous Buyer
Reporting from New York -- It slices! It dices! It pierces and pokes! It pulls stubborn flesh from bone with the flick of a wrist!
And if that doesn't get your prisoner talking, perhaps the ornate chair with its spiked seat, back and arm rests will do the trick.
The ghoulish throne and tiny flesh ripper, part of a bounty of iron torture implements dating to the 16th century, soon will be up for sale, but on one condition: The buyer must have morals as well as money -- more than $3 million, by some estimates.
At a time when America is under the microscope for harsh interrogation techniques used on suspected terrorists, the anonymous seller of the 252-item collection is adamant that it falls into responsible hands and hopeful that it will serve as a reminder of the gruesome nature of torture -- whether it's done with water and a board or an iron toe screw.
A portion of the proceeds will go to Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, said Arlan Ettinger of Guernsey's auction house in New York, who came into possession of the collection this month. The seller, a woman in New England, was moved by the debate over waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other CIA interrogation methods approved by the George W. Bush administration -- so she explained when she called Ettinger, whose auction house has handled scores of high-profile sales, and asked him to arrange a sale.
....He and the seller agreed that the only reasonable plan would be to find a well-intentioned buyer and direct some proceeds to helping prevent future abuses. Ettinger contacted Amnesty International.
"It was one of those things that made me pause for a second and say, 'Wow,' " said Timothy Higdon, Amnesty's deputy director for external affairs. "We think that the conversation around this and the money being generated will certainly help tell the story of why torture is wrong, and why the U.S. government should not be involved in torture."
Sitting in his ground-floor office surrounded by pieces from the collection, Ettinger said that "it made perfect sense that you turn something terrible into something good."
His wooden desk and a nearby table were covered with items like the Small Iron Spider, a flesh-tearing device. "This sweet little thing could grasp any part of one's body and do pain," Ettinger said, squeezing the small handle to make the eight claw-like legs with needle-sharp tips open and close.
There were spiked collars, a large ax and a perforated spoon or sieve "through which boiling water, oil or molten lead was poured onto various portions of the body," according to a catalog accompanying the items.
Iron leg weights were displayed beside the torture chair as a pair of shoes might be shown with a dress: to highlight how well they go together. The weights were designed to add pounds to the person in the torture chair, driving the spikes deeper into the skin.
As well-coiffed women walked dogs past the auction house on a leafy, sun-dappled Manhattan street one recent afternoon, little could they imagine that inside were an iron implement meant to be "affixed to the ears before they were cut off" and "a powerful iron foot breaker." Such were the descriptions in the catalog that accompanied the collection when it went on display in the 1890s.
The catalog, which also is for sale, explains that the items originated in the region of the Holy Roman Empire that became Germany and that "every one of the barbarous implements have been in actual use."
The collection was kept at the Imperial Castle of Nuremberg in Bavaria until the late 1800s, when Britain's Earl of Shrewsbury bought the lot and sent it on tour across Europe and America. In 1893, the collection was displayed at the Chicago World's Fair and in New York.
Eventually, a Norwegian man living in the United States whose family had been persecuted by the Nazis bought the items. His heirs have owned them since his death in the 1970s, and the mysterious woman behind the sale is about as opposite an image of a dungeon master as one could get, Ettinger said.
....If there is an auction, Ettinger said, the atmosphere must be just right -- perhaps a dark-paneled room in an armory.
There also must be plenty of space. The largest items in the collection, which were too big to squeeze into the auction house's office, remain on a farm north of Manhattan. They include a body rack with thumb screws, on which victims were strapped and stretched to painful lengths, and a heavy stone tablet, the must-have accessory for every dungeon master.
Designed to hang over the torture chamber door, its inscription reads: "Dark deeds make dark endings."
Reporting from New York -- It slices! It dices! It pierces and pokes! It pulls stubborn flesh from bone with the flick of a wrist!
And if that doesn't get your prisoner talking, perhaps the ornate chair with its spiked seat, back and arm rests will do the trick.
The ghoulish throne and tiny flesh ripper, part of a bounty of iron torture implements dating to the 16th century, soon will be up for sale, but on one condition: The buyer must have morals as well as money -- more than $3 million, by some estimates.
At a time when America is under the microscope for harsh interrogation techniques used on suspected terrorists, the anonymous seller of the 252-item collection is adamant that it falls into responsible hands and hopeful that it will serve as a reminder of the gruesome nature of torture -- whether it's done with water and a board or an iron toe screw.
A portion of the proceeds will go to Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, said Arlan Ettinger of Guernsey's auction house in New York, who came into possession of the collection this month. The seller, a woman in New England, was moved by the debate over waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other CIA interrogation methods approved by the George W. Bush administration -- so she explained when she called Ettinger, whose auction house has handled scores of high-profile sales, and asked him to arrange a sale.
....He and the seller agreed that the only reasonable plan would be to find a well-intentioned buyer and direct some proceeds to helping prevent future abuses. Ettinger contacted Amnesty International.
"It was one of those things that made me pause for a second and say, 'Wow,' " said Timothy Higdon, Amnesty's deputy director for external affairs. "We think that the conversation around this and the money being generated will certainly help tell the story of why torture is wrong, and why the U.S. government should not be involved in torture."
Sitting in his ground-floor office surrounded by pieces from the collection, Ettinger said that "it made perfect sense that you turn something terrible into something good."
His wooden desk and a nearby table were covered with items like the Small Iron Spider, a flesh-tearing device. "This sweet little thing could grasp any part of one's body and do pain," Ettinger said, squeezing the small handle to make the eight claw-like legs with needle-sharp tips open and close.
There were spiked collars, a large ax and a perforated spoon or sieve "through which boiling water, oil or molten lead was poured onto various portions of the body," according to a catalog accompanying the items.
Iron leg weights were displayed beside the torture chair as a pair of shoes might be shown with a dress: to highlight how well they go together. The weights were designed to add pounds to the person in the torture chair, driving the spikes deeper into the skin.
As well-coiffed women walked dogs past the auction house on a leafy, sun-dappled Manhattan street one recent afternoon, little could they imagine that inside were an iron implement meant to be "affixed to the ears before they were cut off" and "a powerful iron foot breaker." Such were the descriptions in the catalog that accompanied the collection when it went on display in the 1890s.
The catalog, which also is for sale, explains that the items originated in the region of the Holy Roman Empire that became Germany and that "every one of the barbarous implements have been in actual use."
The collection was kept at the Imperial Castle of Nuremberg in Bavaria until the late 1800s, when Britain's Earl of Shrewsbury bought the lot and sent it on tour across Europe and America. In 1893, the collection was displayed at the Chicago World's Fair and in New York.
Eventually, a Norwegian man living in the United States whose family had been persecuted by the Nazis bought the items. His heirs have owned them since his death in the 1970s, and the mysterious woman behind the sale is about as opposite an image of a dungeon master as one could get, Ettinger said.
....If there is an auction, Ettinger said, the atmosphere must be just right -- perhaps a dark-paneled room in an armory.
There also must be plenty of space. The largest items in the collection, which were too big to squeeze into the auction house's office, remain on a farm north of Manhattan. They include a body rack with thumb screws, on which victims were strapped and stretched to painful lengths, and a heavy stone tablet, the must-have accessory for every dungeon master.
Designed to hang over the torture chamber door, its inscription reads: "Dark deeds make dark endings."