Spassk is a special camp for prisoners of war and internees. The camp consisted of 22 departments. They were located in the towns of Karaganda, Temirtau, Saran, as well as in the town of Balkhash at a distance of 650 km from Karaganda. The first echelon with prisoners of war arrived in Spassk in August 1941, in the amount of 1436 people. Two years later, the number of prisoners of war in the camp almost doubled. During the ten years of the camp's existence about 40 thousand prisoners of war, representatives of 26 nationalities, visited it.
The exposition of the hall “Spassk” is based on the image of the wall of the former Spassk camp, where each stone is someone's life, a separate card that was opened for each prisoner.
The terrible reality behind the lines of these documents is complemented by the monotonous movement of the column of prisoners, which seems to have no end. All these people, wandering through the snow, seem to go through the looking glass, reaching the “point of no return”. This image of the camp despair is based on a real historical photograph. The names of the prisoners, real prisoners of the Spassk camp, placed on the wall at the entrance, go through the looking glass. Here you can read the names of the former prisoners of the camp, many of whom never left it.