Bidspirit auction | ”The Terrible History of Torture”

”The Terrible History of Torture” – L'Illustrazione del Popolo Special Issue on the Nazi Monsters. May 1950 - The Italian current affairs weekly L'Illustrazione del Popolo (Illustration of the People), dated May 14, 1950. The principal feature of this issue is devoted to a powerful historical survey of ”The Terrible History of Torture, ” culminating in the atrocities committed in the Nazi death camps. The front cover features a photograph of Irma Grese - the notorious ”Bitch of Auschwitz”—a Nazi war criminal who served as an SS-Aufseherin (female SS guard) at Ravensbrück, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen. She became infamous for her exceptional brutality. ”Across the desolate map of Europe, devastated by the great tragedy of the Second World War, a number of black crosses remain as reminders and warnings. These crosses bear the names Buchenwald, Dachau, Ebensee, Mauthausen, Katyn, and Fossoli (the notorious Italian transit and concentration camp). There - and, tragically, in many other places - human minds, shipwrecked beyond every basic sense of mercy and compassion, placed themselves in the service of a terrible weapon once thought forever confined to the mists of legend: torture. Torture, perhaps born together with the unknown hominids of the forests of the Quaternary Age...”. ”Pictured is Irma Grese, the 'Beast of Belsen, ' a symbol of all the atrocities committed during the recent war, as she is tried and sentenced to death by the court at Nuremberg.” The center pages of the issue are devoted to ”The Terrible History of Torture.” Journalist Aldo Notari opens with a brief historical survey of the use of torture throughout history before turning to the atrocities committed by the Germans during the Second World War - the Katyn Massacre, the establishment of the Nazi death camps, and the deportation of Jews to the gas chambers. The author argues that the concept of the gas chamber was adapted from an earlier method used to euthanize stray dogs: ”That, too, was a 'camp.' When the anti-Jewish persecution began, the clusters of filthy barracks, more or less spacious, crowded with unfortunate Jews of every age and condition, also came to be called 'camps.' For these people, in most cases, the torture did not last long. In a well-equipped laboratory, carefully concealed from prying eyes, someone perfected the invention of a veterinarian who had devised gas chambers years earlier to spare stray dogs captured by dogcatchers from unnecessary suffering, adapting the 'invention' so that it could be used on human beings as well. The suffering of the Jews confined in the 'camps' was limited to starvation, beatings without cause, and general mistreatment. The gas chambers were already prepared when the war broke out. They operated in conjunction with the crematoria, for, tragically, the supply of raw material never diminished; on the contrary, it increased as the German armies expanded across Europe...”. The article also documents interrogations conducted in the torture cellars of the Nazi SS, the brutality of Pietro Koch in Italy, and other crimes. It is illustrated with, among other images, photographs of prisoners from Dachau Concentration Camp who were executed or driven insane as a result of torture. At the center of the front cover appears a profile photograph of a woman identified in the accompanying text - apparently in error - as ”Hilde Lobaner”, described as the ”Monster of Belsen” and presented as a symbol of all the atrocities of the war. The caption further states that she was tried and sentenced to death by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. In fact, Hilde Lobauer, who had served as a Kapo at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, was not tried at Nuremberg but at the famous Belsen Trial, conducted by the British military court in Lüneburg. Moreover, she was not sentenced to death but to ten years' imprisonment (and was released before serving the full term). The notorious epithet ”Monster of Belsen” properly belonged to Irma Grese, whose photograph does in fact appear on the cover. Grese was sentenced to death and executed in December 1945 at HM Prison Hamelin following the Belsen Trial. Grese's reputation as a ”monster” was not without reason. Having committed numerous atrocities during the war including participation in the selection process for the gas chambers and the implementation of exceptionally brutal punishments at Auschwitz, she never expressed remorse for her crimes. Indeed, throughout her trial and even as the death sentence was pronounced, she was the only defendant in the proceedings who displayed open defiance toward the court. Her final letters likewise contained no expression of regret, and she remained loyal to Nazi ideology until the end. According to the research of Wendy Adele-Marie Sarti, on the night before her execution Grese and Johanna Bormann spent the hours until dawn singing Nazi songs. On December 13, she was led to the gallows.