Italian prisoner Michele Zotta later reported that for the first few days of his imprisonment he slept on the ground in a small tent. As to rations, on the first day he received one kilogram of rye bread to share with fifteen other prisoners, with some butter and jelly. From then on the daily routine was for the Germans to distribute a bucket of potatoes to be shared between twenty-five prisoners. Zotta also notes that when prisoners collapsed the Germans would beat them.