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.

After wagons were manually loaded, they were also pushed by hands for a distance of one kilometer to the exit of the tunnel on large heaps that were then transported through a mechanism on trucks. The prisoner returned to the work front with an empty wagon or wooden bodies with which he fortified the area of explosion, after all of the material was extracted.  The routine of description of this road with the wagon full of mineral and return to the front was done seven times per shift.

In rare cases when there was little time before the evening, prisoners spent their time with conversations, simple games, hidden readings, and foreign language learning in secret.  Foreign language learning was prohibited by the camp’s command. This accusation was frequently collected by depositions of spies who had infiltrated in the sleeping rooms and were often used as evidence to re-convict prisoners.

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.

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.