

In the first years of Spaç Camp’s operation, roll call was done at the area in front of the sleeping rooms and craftsman’s barracks. Later, it was done on top of the recently built toiletroom.The sketch shows the latter, where Spaç’s prisoners gathered.As the toilets were rebuilt isolated from above as well, two sets of stairs were used to climb on top, where prisoners gathered to do roll call.Even here, it wasn’t rare that prisoners were held two to three hours in the sun, rain or snow, while officers checked each prisoner.
In certain periods, when discipline in the camp was exerted more aggressively and prisoners revolted more, violence and punishments also increased. In these cases, when several prisoners were punished at once, up to six or seven prisoners were put together in a single cell, who considering the very confined space of these cells, could not even sit or straighten their feet on the ground.
Those who didn’t meet the target were often tied to a column at the tunnels’ exit and left there tied all night or day until the end of the shift. The torture was severely more excruciating during extreme frosts.
In the first years of the camp’s operation, in the years 1968-1971, there were four sleeping areas in Spaç, which were one-story barracks made of mixed concrete.Later in the camp, three-story sleeping areas were built, where every room housed 35 to 50 prisoners.Their number depended on the intake of arrests and political convictions pronounced by the regime. The sleeping areas’ routine was almost the same.That’s where prisoners passed most of their time after eight hours of exhausting work in Spaç’s mines. Sleeping and waking hours were closely related to the three-shift timetable applied for work in the mine.
There was one room where the prisoners slept, particularly after going from one-story barracks to three-story ones, as the sketch indicates, which was full of these bunk beds connected to one another mainly in a U shape and equipped with wooden stairs to climb to the upper bed.Prisoners shared their common space with no separation between mattresses and when the number of prisoners increased, everybody had even less space to give room to the newcomers.
Meeting the rates was often impossible. Few prisoners could physically handle that titanic load at work. In many cases during the cave-ins in the tunnel, there was not enough mineral to fill seven wagons. But prison command never accepted any justification for not meeting the rate. The most common expression of officers in Spaç was “Either your plan (target) or your soul”, which implied that death awaited all those who didn’t give the regime whatever was required at all costs.