Lithuania
Cell
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This is called a smaller cell. In the postwar years, up to 15 prisoners at a time were kept here. Until 1947, there were no bunks or lockers. The prisoners slept on the concrete floor, covered with their clothes.
There was a plastic vessel (called parasha by prisoners) in the corner of the cell, which served as a toilet, because during the period of Stalin’s regime prisoners were taken to the toilet just once a day.
The lights were on round the clock. Prisoners were not allowed to sleep from 7 am to 10 pm, but they also had no rest at night because of routine night interrogations. This was a way of torture: to exhaust people and to make them “confessâ€.
Tests carried out in 1995 and 1996 showed 18 coats of paint on the walls to cover up the writing left by prisoners. The present colour is one of the oldest.
