372 men and 44 women were interrogated at Bad Nenndorf torture camp during the 22 months it was operated before its closure in July 1947. Many of the inmates were there for no reason at all. One, a former diplomat, remained locked up because he had learned too much about the British interrogation methods. Another arrived after a clerical error, and was incarcerated for eight months. Others interrogated at Bad Nenndorf, included Nazis, German industrialists, and former members of the SS. All inmates were starved and badly tortured - by thumbscrews, shin screws and other  torturing instruments. At least two men were starved to death, at least one was beaten to death, others suffered serious illness or injuries, and many lost toes to frostbite. Bad Nenndorf was one of those torture camps whose secrets are now slowly emanating. Little is known, however, about the other torture camps in Germany, other than their locations. In 1947, the Bad Nenndorf torture camp was reconverted into a bath-house. The closure of Bad Nenndorf was not the end of the story, however. Three months later a custom-built interrogation centre, with cells for 30 men and 10 women, was opened near to the RAF base at Gütersloh.   

Some archive pictures of German prisoners held in the British torture camps that British authorities tried to keep hidden have now been published. Even now UK government officials are arguing that none should be published. Many other photographs known to have been taken, have vanished from the archives. 

One of the men photographed, Gerhard Menzel, 23, a student, weighed 10st 3lb at his arrest and 7st 10lb eight months later. His hands had been chained behind his back for up to 16 days at a time, periods during which he was repeatedly punched in the face. He had also been held in a bare, freezing cell for up to two weeks at a time and doused in cold water every 30 minutes from 4.30am until midnight, a common British practice. Mr Menzel was one of a group of 12 torture survivors, all emaciated and dressed in rags. Some had facial scars, apparently the result of beatings. A few had scars on their shins, said to be the result of torture with shin screws. Mr Menzel was only skin and bones, he could neither walk nor stand up without assistance, and could only speak with difficulty because his tongue and lips were swollen and broken open. It was impossible to take his body temperature because it was not higher than 35 degrees Celsius and the thermometer only starts at 35.

Another survivor pictured was Heinz Biedermann, 20, a clerk. By the time he was transferred from Bad Nenndorf, his weight had fallen from 11st 3lb to 7st 12lb. He had been held in solitary confinement for much of the time, threatened with execution, and forced to live and sleep in sub-zero temperatures while barely clothed. Adolf Galla, 36, a dental technician, weighed a little over 38 kilograms after his transfer from Bad Nenndorf torture camp. He was a cadaverous shadow of a human being and had literally no flesh on him; his state of emaciation was incredible. Robert Buttlar, 27, a journalist, had swallowed a spoon handle in a suicide attempt at the same Bad Nenndorf prison. He too was emaciated, and four of his toes had been lost to frostbite. He had spent two years as a prisoner of the Gestapo. And not once, he said, did they treat him as badly as the British. In January 1947, two other inmates, Walter Bergmann, 20, and Franz Osterreicher, 38, had died of malnutrition. Hans Habermann, a 43-year-old disabled German Jew who had survived three years in Buchenwald concentration camp, was tortured and starved at Bad Nenndorf, but also survived this camp. The former SS officer Abeling had been so severely beaten during his arrest in January 1947 that he was unconscious on arrival at the prison, and died shortly afterwards. The commanding officer of the Bad Nenndorf torture camp was Robin "Tin Eye" Stephens, 45, a monocled colonel of the Peshawar Division of the Indian Army. Stephens boasted that interrogators who could "break" a man were born, and not made. The 20 interrogators ordered to break the inmates of Bad Nenndorf were mostly German Jewish refugees.  

The Bad Nenndorf torture camp was run by the British 'Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre', a division of the War Office. This centre operated  torture camps around the world, including another very infamous one known as the 'London Cage'. Also in this secret torture centre German prisoners were concealed from the Red Cross. The 'Cage' had space for 60 prisoners. More than 1,000 were tortured to give statements about ' war crimes'. Many German prisoners were convicted of war crimes and hanged on the basis of a confessions which they had signed after having been tortured. The 'London Cage' operated between July 1940 and September 1948: A total of 3,573 prisoners passed through it. The men were systematically beaten, deprived of sleep, forced to stand still for more than 26 hours at a time and threatened with execution or unnecessary surgery or to arrest, torture and murder their wives and children. Any prisoner thought to be uncooperative during interrogation was taken to a punishment cell where they would be stripped and repeatedly doused in water. This punishment could continue for weeks, even in sub-zero temperatures. Naked prisoners were handcuffed back-to-back and forced to stand before open windows in midwinter. Some have been starved and subjected to extremes of temperature in specially built showers, while others had been threatened with electric shock torture or menaced by interrogators brandishing red-hot pokers. Prisoners had been forced to kneel while being beaten about the head. German naval officers in full dress uniform had to clean the entrance hall floor on their hands and knees, the guardsmen standing with one foot on the prisoners' back, casually enjoying a smoke. The 'London Cage' continued to operate for three years after the war, during which time a number of German civilians were also tortured. Not all the torture centre's secrets have yet emerged, however: the Ministry of Defence is continuing to withhold some of the papers almost 60 years after the camps were closed down. 

SS captain Fritz Knoechlein was facing the death penalty. He was taken to the 'Cage' in October 1946. Because he was unable to make the desired confession, he was stripped, given only a pair of pyjama trousers, deprived of sleep for four days and nights, and starved. The guards kicked him each time he passed, while his interrogators boasted that they were much better than the Gestapo in Alexanderplatz. After being forced to perform rigorous exercises until he collapsed, he was compelled to walk in a tight circle for four hours. Knoechlein was doused in cold water, pushed down stairs, and beaten with a cudgel. Later he was forced to stand beside a large gas stove with all its rings lit before being confined in a shower which sprayed extremely cold water from the sides as well as from above. Finally he and another prisoner were taken into the gardens behind the mansions, where they were forced to run in circles while carrying heavy logs. Other prisoners were beaten until they begged to be killed, while some were told that they could be made to disappear. Similar tortures happened in 1947, and again the following year, when 21 Gestapo and police officers were tried. Among them was Erich Zacharias, a sergeant in the Gestapo's frontier police. Twenty of them were convicted and 14 were hanged, Zacharias among them.

Literatur über / Writings concerning  Allied tortures

Letzte Änderung / Last update: 07.08.2008 

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