Anyone who didn’t meet his target was forced back to the tunnel with the other shift and held there until the end of that shift with no food or rest at any given moment until they met their daily target. Police officers inflicted extraordinary violence to those prisoners who refused to enter the tunnel.
Temperature in pyrite tunnels changed extremely compared to temperature out of tunnels, where prisoners got out to empty their wagons. Inside, temperatures varied from 50 to 60 degrees Celsius, whereas winter temperatures hit -20 degrees Celsius outside. In winter, prisoners worked naked inside the tunnels, whereas outside they wore fur coats they stored at the entrance to protect themselves somewhat from the extreme change of temperature. This was the cause that the predominant disease of the camp was the cold. It accompanied prisoners for as long as they were forced to live in that hell.
In the sleeping areas, prisoners secretly distributed Albanian translated works, which were not allowed by camp command. They were copied and re-copied and prisoners circulated them to be read by everyone. Convicted writers and poets also circulated their poems. Often police officers in the camp did detailed checks and if they were caught, these were cause for re-conviction. That was why manuscripts were often hidden in the mine, in different places like airing pipes or special spots created by prisoners themselves in the tunnels’ wooden reinforcement structure.
As a form of torture, especially in the cold winter days when temperatures hit subzero temperatures, police officers poured water in the isolation cells. As such, prisoners punished in the cells had to go through not only the cold, but also exhaustion and insomnia, as they could not sit or sleep.
In area no. 2 of Spaç, pyrite extraction was performed, whereas in area no. 1 and no. 3, there was copper extraction. In all areas, each group’s (made of one miner and two carters) daily target was the extraction of seven wagons of mineral, cleaning the front from inert material, reinforcing the whole area where they had worked, whereas the opening of holes was then done by a free miner, i.e., not imprisoned, as the process included the use of explosive devices which were never entrusted on a prisoner for security reasons. This free miner would fill the holes with explosives to be detonated for the following shift. The first shift ended after all this work processes had been closed by the three-prisoner group.
The tunnels’ amortization was one of the largest impediments of the prisoners’ work process and often in their testimonies they recalled that the greatest difficulty was raising a wagon when it derailed and fell. The prisoner was forced to raise the wagon on his own using his shoulders and upon restoring it on the rails, he refilled it with the fallen mineral.