The reason, it was the first time in the history of the prison, often called “New York’s Little Siberia” due to the cold climate, located about 20 miles from the Canadian border, that a prisoner managed to escape.

According to official reports, Matt and Sweat, both men with long, violent criminal histories “have used power tools to cut through the walls of their adjoining cells, escaping onto an internal catwalk. They then snaked their way down through the bowels of the prison into a two-foot pipe they had cut a hole in. They crawled under the prison’s 30 feet soaring cement walls and emerged onto the streets of Dannemora from a manhole about a block away from the prison.”

After their escape, they have managed to evade capture by a massive manhunt, for more than a week, the longest time in the history of New York state maximum-security prisons.

Curiously enough, I am quite familiar with the world inside the Dannemora prison. Dr. Selig Auerbach, the former rabbi of Lake Placid, served also as the official Jewish chaplain at Dannemora. He kept office hours there, one day a week, to minister to the handful of Jewish prisoners incarcerated there among the more than 2,000 inmates. Because the rabbi didn’t drive, I was often recruited as his volunteer driver and spent the day with him at the prison.

Just to get in was an elaborate procedure, never mind the protocol followed to be let out. The rabbi had an inmate assistant to handle the paperwork. Joe’s offense was to be a brazen “paperhanger” who passed bad checks. He did this too many times and wound up with a long sentence. As a result, he was automatically placed in maximum security.

Building a maximum cell costs more than $100,000, and the operating cost exceeds $25,000 a year per inmate. Thus it is the height of folly to fill up maximum-security prisons with non-violent offenders. It happens all the time, mostly because of Draconian drug legislation enacted decades ago mandating long prison sentences for drug offenses.

A long line of inmates who visited the office of the prison chaplain illustrated the situation inside the prison. They asked for assistance ranging from character references for the parole board to help with family reconciliations.

The plea of one inmate, a former business executive, was a telling example. Once a successful entrepreneur, he succumbed to drugs and passed a small amount of cocaine to one of his associates. He was dealt a harsh sentence. His world came apart. His wife wanted a divorce and refused to talk to him. The inmate, in tears, begged the chaplain to intervene.

Some of the behind-the-bars stories from Dannemora have a poignant side, like the aged convict who in his younger years was a promising banker. Instead, he became a big-time embezzler and got a long stretch. In prison, using his financial acumen, he rose to become an important clerical helper in the penitentiary’s industrial sector. He came to be respected among the convicts and the administration.

Rabbi Auerbach, however, was determined not to see the old man die in prison. The authorities were ready to grant him parole if someplace could be found to take him. The chaplain secured a spot in a Jewish retirement home. I was present when he conveyed the good news to the inmate.

The old man was not pleased. “I wouldn’t know how to behave outside of those walls,” he said. “My life would be worthless. I will die.” Finally, he was persuaded to accept the parole and move to the retirement home. He died there less than two months later.

Others, like the killers, Matt and Sweat, would risk everything to get out from Dannemora.

Frank Shatz lives in Williamsburg Va. and Lake Placid. His column was reprinted with permission from the Virginia Gazette. He is the author of “Reports from a Distant Place,” a compilation of his selected columns.