Word: necks
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...workers. After that, the moves are inexorable and a little pat: Commie cell organizer, a training stint in Moscow, the Cominform, the return to Prague as the party's dreaded "Grey Eminence." He has a direct line to the Kremlin, until the line is ruthlessly twisted around his neck. For long stretches. Author Wechsberg takes his eyes off Slansky-Stern to sketch in personal memories of how the easygoing Kaffeeklatsch world of his youth was laced into the straitjacket of Red tyranny. The book is good reporting. There is only one bone to pick with Wechsberg's theme...
...with second-degree burns covering 45% of his body surface, had undergone several unsuccessful skin grafts in 18 months, went from 130 to 90 Ibs. because of refusal to eat properly. Skin infections and contractures (contracted-burn scar tissue) made it difficult for him to move his limbs and neck. Within a few days after hypnosis began, he was taking 4,200 calories per day, became cheerful and cooperative. Thanks to improved diet, skin grafts began to "take." Twelve weeks later, B. W., healed, walked out of the hospital...
...executioners could be rewarded with more than their present fee (about $44 a knot). Moreover, says Duff, hangings should be broadcast for their highly dramatic sound effects, such as "the crack like a muffled shot of a small pistol which indicates the official breaking of the criminal's neck...
...with any class of people, and should be "capable of being the guide, philosopher and friend of whomsoever he must hang for us." In particular, Duff sings the praises of 19th century Hangman James Berry, who calculated precisely the length of rope needed to break the prisoner's neck with pulling the head off. Berry expressed this in a brilliant and still widely used equation which, at least in Author Duff's version runs thus...
...that the gallows are brutal, and that even the basest criminals are too good for hanging. But all he may accomplish is that reformers will propose some more efficient or humanitarian substitutes for the gallows-such as the neat old guillotine, the quick bullet in the back of the neck, or the concentration camp, where prisoners may die unhurriedly and without benefit of rope...