According to collected testimonies, the camp’s sleeping areas had other bed placement systems, too, such as in this sketch.  In some operating periods of this camp, when there was a large number of incomig prisoners, up to 50 people were forced to stay in one room.Prisoners also held their personal belongings and moccasins or clogs (shoes were rare) that they wore in the camp’s premises.Among the personal belongings, there were:2 pairs of clothes, 1 aluminum or plastic canteen, 1 toothbrush, 1 notebook, 1 bowl, 1 aluminum tablespoon, 1 mattress, blanket and sheet.  The wooden stairs to climb the upper beds were everywhere in the sleepng area.

In Spaç, prisoners died from mine accidents, diseases or executions by guard soldiers in escape attempts. Their bodies were not returned to their families, instead they were buried by camp command in a place that was kept secret during the years of dictatorship and after the regime’s fall this burial site was found out to have been in Shpal, Mirdita. No name was put on the prisoners’ graves, only a number. Family members have found a part of their relatives’ graves in Spaç Camp according to the prisoner’s data, which were placed in a small glass bottle in the grave, near the victim’s head.

In Spaç, there was poor quality food with no standards whatsoever.According to archival records and several testimonies collected among former prisoners, the food diet has changed frequently.Most of the time of its operation, however, daily quotas for prisoners working in Spaç’s mines were these:900 grams of bread per day.Breakfast included soup with seasonal vegetables, and sometimes a little meat.  Lunch was soup and a ladleful of pasta or rice with some meat.The standard was 40 grams of meat, but they were almost never provided with as much.Dinner was tea and 20 grams of feta cheese or, if there was no feta, 10 grams of typical yellow cheese and, in times of crisis, apple or fig marmalade.The first shift had the most normal food diet, whereas the two other shifts had tea for breakfast, soup for lunch and soup and rice or pasta for dinner.  This was adapted to their times of leaving for work and returning to the camp.Some archival documents, as well as many testimonies of former prisoners, record frequent food poisonings of prisoners.In a report dated 27th August 1979, prison command had complained for the poisoning of 150 prisoners.The most common symptoms were stomachaches and nausea.

The toilet was the first place prisoners went to after waking up.  After leaving the sleepig area, prisoners all went to do their morning routine.  In the first years of the camp’s operation, the toilet was a large rectangular barracks, where sheet metal and boards served as walls, and the roof was made of eternit.  Its inner space was like in this sketch.The bathrooms were in one side, which were open and doorless, completely removing everyone’s right to intimacy.The only separation was a low one-meter wall separating the spaces between them.Within the space of a toilet, there was simply a hole where they relieved themselves and some cement around to put their feet on.

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.