Whereas the two miners loaded wagons and did seven hellish trips on pyrite or copper tunnels, the other prisoner prepared the bodies to reinforce the whole dug area once it had been emptied. This area would be entirely reinforced on the sides and ceiling of the tunnel with wooden bodies, which were torn up and shaped in such a way to be fitted with one another. This wooden reinforcement secured the tunnel up to a point to avoid collapse and provide for further digging.

Upon their return, rebel prisoners who refused to work were put in cells and left in isolation up to 30 days. In official records, we discover that only in the first half of 1980, 118 convicts had been put to the cell.

This is a sketch of the clothes warehouse, where prisoners would keep their work clothes and dress to get ready to go to the mine.The warehouse had cotton fur costumes, rubber boots, puttees, miner’s caps, etc.

If a convict was serving the last days of his sentence, he was never sure he would really be released. It was not uncommon for Spaç convicts to be arrested in the camp, too, sent to the interrogation office at Rrëshen’s Interior Branch and be judged on all kinds of charges, such as escape attempt, agitation and propaganda, violence towards prison command etc. Charges were almost always trumped up and evidence was collected by spy inmates. The majority of re-convictions were for agitation and propaganda.

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.