Page 19 - Underground Prisoner Museum, Advanced Level

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Advanced Level - ‫מוזיאון אסירי המחתרות‬

Life in prison - The Reconstructed Cell in Room 43

In every room there was a "Muchtar" who watched over the rest of
the prisoners.
Usually they chose for the position the strongest prisoner of the
group who could take care of discipline. The Muchtar received all
kinds of benefits: a few more cigarettes, a little more freedom in the
yard, etc. He had blue uniforms, as opposed to the brown uniforms
of the rest of the prisoners, and most importantly, he slept on a bed in
the corner of the room. The rest of the prisoners slept on thin
mattresses.
The "Muchtars" needed to take care of the social and spiritual side of
their friends and took care of studies in the prison. Anyone who was
an expert in a certain field was appointed to teach his friends this
field (English, Math, etc.).
In the museum it is possible to find hundreds of letters which the
prisoners wrote to their families, and it is interesting to see that the
complaints of the prisoners were not about the physical difficulty in
prison, but the anguish and the anger for being imprisoned here at a
time that their friends are fighting and risking their lives outside.
The physical conditions in prison were hard:
1. Sleeping on a thin mattress in the cold nights of Jerusalem.
2. Bland and meager food – two meals a day, pita bread with
legumes every day.
3. Instead of a bathroom there was only a bucket for each prisoner
without any privacy.
Every day the prisoners woke up at 5:30, cleaned the room and
worked in the prison until 4:00 in the afternoon.
From 4:00 in the afternoon the prisoners were in the room until the
morning.
The Jewish prisoners did not waste their time. They studied, wrote
and created sometimes amazing handicrafts which it is possible to
see in the exhibition of the prison. The prisoners were able to meet
their families only once every two months for a quarter of an hour.
The visitors stood outside the prison behind a barbed-wire fence
without touching, hugging and kissing their relatives, and they were
barely able to hear each other.

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