Lithuania
Solitary Confinement Cell
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There were a few cells like this after the war, but by 1991 just one of them was left. Prisoners were thrown into it for breaking the rules: for example, for trying to have a nap during the day, or tapping out messages to each other in Morse code. The interrogators used to lock up here those who refused to give the evidence they wanted to hear. In the immediate postwar years prisoners were kept stripped down to their underwear in the unheated cell. They were given about 300 grams of bread and half a litre of water a day. They were allowed five hours of sleep and were not taken out to walk in the yard. Cold, hungry and weak, they were expected to break down and confess.
Conditions in the special solitary confinement cells with water were even worse. Prisoners had to stand in the ice-cold water (in winter, on ice) or to balance on a small platform. Every time they dozed off they fell down into the water.
The solitary confinement cells with water were set up in approximately 1945. These cells are mentioned in former prisoners’ memoirs. In the Fifties, the cells were re-designed. One was turned into a doctor’s room, another into a library, and wooden floorboards were laid. These cells were only discovered in 1996 when the heating system was being repaired.
