#also i stopped drawing at some point so all my accounts died of starvation

[dvrtrblhr]

What is your Twitter? 😭❤️

Hello! I'm very bad at being social so I... don't have a twitter 😥 I have been meaning to create one for very long, but then that guy bought the thing and my interest waned.

I wonder... do you people still think it's worth it to be there? Would you prefer/ find easier to find my art there than here on tumblr? I'm just VERY unfamiliar with twitter's environment so I find it... unnerving.

But it's something I have considered, so maybe I should take the plunge? IDK...

On another note, I do have an instagram account (I'm babittia there) and AO3 (dvrtrblhr - fic only).

[scripttorture]

Hello, I was wondering if you are familiar with tortures used in internment camps. I have read about the Holocaust internment camps, but I want to know if there are other examples I could look at to help with my writing. I am writing about an internment camp set in a new world in a dystopian, sci-fi setting. I'm trying to draw up knowledge about the tortures used against people in these camps. I want to be as realistic as possible without offending those who survived the camps.

Hi, thanks for reachingout. :)

 There are otherexamples of internment camps and so far as I know torture is generally commonin them. That doesn’t necessarily mean that whole groups of people are targetedfor genocide as in the Holocaust. An internment camp is essentially a verylarge group of extremely vulnerable people who are usually not monitored orprotected very well. Which unfortunately means abuse and torture can occur andthe authorities are often unable to stop it.

 Realistically whatsomeone in a camp might suffer depends a lot on where in the world they are andwhen. Why they’re interred can also bean important factor.

 In a general sense beatings,theft and sexual abuse seem to occur in pretty much all these camps even whenthe authorities are genuinely committed to providing a safe environment.

 Overcrowding, exposureto the elements, lack of food, lack of clean water and lack of hygienefacilities are also major problems. These are not necessarily actively caused by the authorities. Many of thesecamps have sprung up suddenly when massive numbers of people have fled violence.Even with a good and committed humanitarian response a sudden influx of tens orhundreds of thousands of people tends to strain local resources.

 Which is a major partof the reason Bangladesh is currently trying to stop refugees from Myanmar from entering official camps for thedisplaced. With almost half a million people having fled over the border in thespace of a month the government thinks that they won’t be able to support them.

 As bad as the situationin Bangladesh is nothing I’ve read yet suggests a concerted policy of abusetowards interred refugees. There is a lot of neglect and a lack of basicinfrastructure and that is making the living conditions on the ground terrible.

 I’d contrast that withthe treatment of ‘boat people’ trying to reach Australia who are currentlyinterred on Papua New Guinea. The few studies I’ve come across suggest thecamps are extremely dangerous places and that refugees are often attacked bylocal people. Papua New Guinea is one of the poorest countries in the world andmany locals feel that the refugees (who are paid for by Australia but areunable to leave Papua New Guinea) are treated better than locals. Interredpeople in these camps have protested with hunger strikes, suicide andself-mutilation (sewing the eyelids and lips closed).

 This is different againto camps that were involved in forced labour or mass murder.

 The Japanese campsduring World War 2 were incredibly brutal but what exactly victims suffereddepended very much on which camp they were in and where they were from. RonaldSearle, who was in south east Asia, describes forced labour, beatings, stresspositions, starvation and disease. But he wasn’t subjected to the repeated rapescaptured ‘comfort women’ from Korea, China and other parts of the world were.

 Neither were subjectedto the unethical experimentation carried out by Unit 731, which vivisectedpeople, poisoned them, gave them diseases and subjected them to extremes oftemperature until they died.

 This is again distinctfrom the way the British treated Mau-Mau suspects in Kenya. Ihave a Masterpost on the Mau-Mau here.

 When it comes to theHolocaust specifically the tortures that were generally used in camps werequite…straightforward.

 The German NationalStyle at the time focused heavily on whipping. Prisoners in camps were starvedand subjected to forced exercise and forced labour as a matter of routine.

 Sleep deprivation wasused against political prisoners but I’m unsure if it was used against others.Leg screws and finger or thumb screws were used during ‘interrogations’. Forcedkneeling and forced standing stress positions were used.

 There were somedifferences throughout Nazi occupied Europe during this period. Essentially thetorturers were not always German and the National Styles of other countries fedinto the treatment of prisoners as Nazi collaborators from other countries wereoften in prominent positions.

 France in particular didn’t adhere to the German NationalStyle of the time, but since France didn’t have a lot of internment camps I won’tgo into that.

 In Poland (which didcontain a lot of camps) beating was the most common torture with objects suchas cudgels, iron bars, ‘brass knuckles’ and chains. Whipping was also common.Suspension, forced exercise and asphyxiation using gas masks (this was acentral part of the eastern European ‘Style’ at the time) were all used. Nailswere torn out. Prisoners were burnt with hot irons and cigarettes.

 Not all of theseexamples are from camps particularly. Some are from police stations. I’m tryingto include as full a list of common techniques as possible because my sources aren’talways clear on where in the country exactly each technique was used.

 I think that with a setup like this you also need toconsider the matter as a writer.

 I think that you are definitely doing the right thing bytrying to look up real life cases and considering real life victims when youwrite. But in this case I don’t think respecting victims that necessarily meansstrictly sticking to one National Styleof torture.

 I’ve tried to give youa variety of examples that you could do further research on if you like.

 My advice would be toremember that torture in your dystopian world doesn’t have to perfectly mirror the techniques of a particular place andtime. It’s a great detail to include but it’s nowhere near as important ascapturing the experience of the victims.

 There are a great manybooks on and by Holocaust survivors. Personally I found Schlinder’s Ark a good starting point for the variety of peopleportrayed. I also found The PeriodicTable useful but that is much more one person’s experience.

 Ronald Searle’s book To the Kwai and Back captures hisexperience of forced labour in a very emotive way and talks about how he movedon from that experience. If you have a visual impairment this may be lessaccessible to you because it’s mostly Searle’s drawings of the abuse that hewitnessed.

 A Darkling Plain by Monroe is a book ofinterviews with survivors of atrocities. It’s particularly focused on thequestion of how people ‘keep their humanity’ in the middle of awful situations.I’ve found it incredibly useful for the variety of victims and the variety ofresponses it shows. It also has accounts from much more modern human rightsabuses which you may find helpful for the sci-fi aspect of your setting. If youcan get hold of it I’d strongly recommend this book.

 I think one of the mainthings to remember is that survivors are all individual. There isn’t a ‘right’and ‘wrong’ way to respond when the world goes mad around you.

 I’d suggest trying toshow a real range of responses among the victims and survivors. In theirsymptoms but also in what they feel is important in their life, both in thecamp and if possible afterwards. For some people that can be human connections,especially family ones. Some survivors report feeling an incredible closenessto their family and more broadly to other survivors. Some report feelingutterly cut off from everyone else.

 There are survivors who’vethrown themselves into all sorts of things afterwards: law, music, teaching,history, in Searle’s case sketching. There are also a lot of people who wentback to relatively normal lives. They’ll all have difficulties, but they willalso all go on to do something.

 You’ve probably alreadyhad a look at mypost on the common effects of torture but I’m going to link to it again just incase. :)

 I feel like this is apretty broad answer but I hope it’s covered a lot of the main points andperhaps given you some new places to look. The history of internment camps is avery broad topic. If I find something specifically on camps themselves ratherthan on a particular time and place I’ll be sureto add it to the Source page here.

 I hope that helps. :)

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