Pau de Arara

Parrot swing ( also Boger swing, in the English speaking parrot perch ) is a method of tying for torture purposes, in which the person is suspended with the knees upside down on a pole and tied in front of the shins to the ankles, or at the bar the wrists. The term comes from Brazil ( there pau de arara called ) and refers to the fact that the bar in the parrot cage is the only stop for the bird. If he loses his balance, he hangs upside down.

This method has been and is applied in many countries, there are no visible marks on the body of the person concerned to remain and the necessary equipment is to be made available everywhere or with little effort. It is used in each case a cross bar, which is similar to a triangle or a carpet rod attached, or even like a trapezoid can be hung. The train of body weight in the knees after a short interval to onset and increasing pain. Due to the posture in which the person concerned is forced it is completely immobile and defenseless, which already leads to a Ängstigung and humiliation. The prisoners here are mostly unclothed, that in these the feeling of powerlessness and vulnerability increases and promotes the aspect of humiliation in addition. Often the persons concerned are blindfolded in addition, which leads to spatial disorientation.

The Auschwitz concentration camp was the appropriate applied during interrogations torture Boger swing, after the employees of the political department Wilhelm Boger, who acted as eponym, as he used to use this method preferred. He described it as a talking machine. During interrogations, the persons concerned were usually beaten with a stick or horsewhip, especially on the buttocks, feet or back. Wilhelm Boger had adopted this method of torture by a Gestapo officer who arrived for questioning to Auschwitz, where he had introduced this method of torture. A similar, less restrictive variant consisted of the person standing in front on a waist-high bar to bend the hands were tied below the bar behind the legs. The Boger swing was later abolished by the commander Arthur Liebehenschel.