The labourers worked in 12-hour shifts of 3,000–4,000 men, with three 20-minute breaks during each shift. The work continued around the clock, seven days a week, under giant floodlights during the night. The living and working conditions were extremely harsh, especially for the political prisoners and the eastern Europeans, who were given especially punitive treatment due to their status as the most expendable members of the workforce. For the non-German workers, falling ill or being unable to work through injury was the equivalent of a death sentence, as they would either be left to die or be transported back to the concentration camps from which they had been brought. A German commission that inspected the labour camps in the area in late 1943 commented: "The Eastern worker is very tough. He works at his job until he falls flat on his face in the mire, and all that is left for the doctor to do is to issue the death certificate."