Enough with the red phones ringing in the middle of the night. If there really were a crisis somewhere in the world and they needed to call the White House, wouldn't you hope they had the cell phone number of the President? The sat-phone number? Can't they just send a text message? Are all the Secret Service Agents asleep and can't be bothered to knock on the door? All those images of phones ringing in the dead of the night did remind me of a phone I once saw in the KGB museum in Vilnus, Lithuia. No dial, just a phone, like on the set of Get Smart. However the museum, actually called the Museum of Genocide Victims, was a stark reminder of the brutality of the Soviet Regime. It was housed in the basement of the former KGB headquarters in Lithuania and exhibited real instruments of torture the likes of which I had not seen since the European instruments of torture and capital punishment exhibit. Torture has been big for some time now. Perhaps someday, Guantanmo will also be a musuem.
The KGB musuem had an actual water torture cell, which consisted of small windowless cell, approximately 8 feet by 8 feet across. In the center was small steel platform about the size of large pizza pan, raised about 1 foot off the floor. The floor of the cell was constructed like a shower stall and when in use, water was filled just below the lip of the platform. The cell wasn't heated, and this being the basement, the cell stayed about 50 degrees year round. The prisoner was forced to stand on the platform, sometimes without clothes. As long as the prisoner could stand on the tiny platform, they could remain dry. The walls were far enough away so that you couldn't brace yourself, so the only way to stand upright was to balance on the disc. Try standing in the same spot for an hour. Now 2 hours. Now a day. Now 2 days. If one got tired, or sleepy, and stepped off the platform they went into the water, and once wet, there was no way to get dry. No place to urinate, or shit, except in the water. Prisoners were kept in the cell for several days to soften them up if they didn't go mad. Think you'd be happy to see your captor after a few days in this cell?There was also a padded room, which is maybe where you went after you'd lost your wits in the water torture cell.
All that was creepy enough, but there were even creepier things to come. One thing that really stuck with me was after showing you several large cells were prisoners were kept; these were big enough to hold maybe 6 prisoners, you were led past one cell were the entire door was papered over. There was a small typewritten notice taped next to the door explaining that the room was sealed because it held the remains of thousands of unknown dissidents who had been "disappeared" by the KGB during the Soviet occupation. These remains had been uncovered in mass graves, discovered after the fall of the Soviet Union, as construction projects began around the newly developing Vilnius.
Upstairs there was another exhibit of dissidents that had been exiled to Siberia. Among the personal effects displayed were letters that prisoners had sent home. The letters expressed an air of confidence to their loved ones, often with an element of trying to reassure the family that the camps weren't so bad, their health was fine, when in fact conditions were horrific and the prisoners were starving and freezing to death. What was telling and jarring was how the letters were juxtaposed with photographs of actual camp conditions and photographs of those who wrote the letters and how as the photographs got more and more dismal, the tone of the letters still tried to remain upbeat and hopeful. Most of these dissidents never returned home alive.
Photograph of the Museum of Genocide Victims, at the former KGB Headquarters, Vilnius, Lithuania, by Sigitas Platukis
elsewehre
museum of genocide victims
european instruments of torture and capital punishment