Often during the 30-day punishment in the cell, prisoners’ hands and legs were tied. This was another form of torture and a frequently seen phenomenon in former prisoners’ testimonies. Tied up prisoners could not feed by themselves. Therefore, when they had mates inside, they would help them eat. Meanwhile, when they were alone, they wouldn’t be able to even cover themselves with the thin blanket they were provided for the night, which they would move around with their teeth or tied hands.

In Spaç’s tunnels, tragedies caused by accidents were frequent.    The main cause of accidents were technical conditions out of any standard as tunnels were secured with primitive methods.   Often, prison command, to meet the high targets of mineral extraction, forced prisoners to go and work in dangerous fronts, declared as such by engineers, too.   After the accidents, the wounded were mainly medicated in the premises of the camp infirmary.  Those who died were buried by prison command in a secred terrain.

In the copper area the daily target was also seven wagons. Provided that one shovelful of copper weighed less than that of pyrite, work was somewhat less difficult in these areas. Furthermore, climate conditions in copper tunnels were more stable and there was no great temperature variation as in the pyrite area. According to the same estimate, the quantity a prisoner had to manually load onto the wagons every day to then transport them to the heap was 8,400 kilograms of copper.

The work routine was also the same in the copper area. At the start, they extracted mineral with wagons from the work front where the explosion had occurred, cleaned the inert material, and then reinforced the cleared front, create holes to detonate the explosives for the successive shift.

Sinks were found at the end of the rectangular barracks that served as a toilet, along with the entrance.To go there, you had to pass the doorless toilets and showers, while other prisoners could be using them.The sink was a common one for everyone, made of cement in the shape of a long washtub, over and parallel to which a water pipe was installed with several consecutive holes out of which cold water ran and poured on the washtub.That’s where prisoners washed their faces, or even feet.There was never any hot water.

In the pyrite area the daily rate for each working group was seven wagons. As such, the two carters of the group had to fill seven wagons of mineral.  According to former prisoner Shkëlqim Abazi’s testimony, a wagon would take around 200 shovels of pyrite to fill. A shovelful of pyrite weighed from 18 to 25 kg. According to an average number, one wagon had around 3,600 kg of pyrite.  This estimate would mean that the two carters had to fill seven wagons, or 25,200 kg of mineral per shift, or 12,600 kg of mineral each.  Imagine the daily routine for this enslaving work where one man had to load 12,600 kg of mineral every day!

Beyond the grueling process of this mineral’s extraction, pyrite tunnels were far more dangerous than copper ones. The terrain was highly unstable due to the mineral’s acid sand-like composition, therefore collapses in pyrite tunnels were quite often. Furthermore, the acid environment made work all the harder. Acid drops that dripped ceaselessly in the tunnel not only eroded and burnt the prisoner’s unprotected skin; they also eroded and destroyed the rails on which prisoners had to push their wagons. This added on to the exhausting work: as the wagons had to be pushed for around one kilometer and the same distance back.