Man's search for meaning..

I recently read a book called “Man’s search for meaning” by Victor Frankl (A jewish psychologist) who survived the tormentous times & then there was this spur of events that has prompted me to write this POST today :


I saw a movie called “The inglorious bastards”
My fav TV show CSI NY showed an episode involving a jewish nazi linked murder case

People today have the guts to question & blame GOD for the smallest in-conveniences in life – why am I sick, why is my office so far, why am I being denied this promotion, no vacation for me this year while here were people who had no names, no identity of themselves except a prisoner id no., had all their possessions taken away except for d pair of clothes on their naked bodies. I can never figure out what instilled the hope in their minds to remain alive. Some gave up on life but most didn’t.

The prisoners in these jewish concentration camps had no right, no control on their fates – they had absolutely nothing. The 1st thing these people learnt at camps was that text books only tell lies – they had studied in school that humans cannot remain alive w/o sleep for a certain no. of days (based on gender, age, health patterns etc.) while here they were – staying awake for weeks at a stretch. Men had to share blankets with a 1:5 ratio in temp below 0’C. The author goes onto mention that a few of his friends who were used to only sleeping with the lights off, curtains down, absolute silence were now sleeping with a dozen men on a single 6-8 ft wooden plank with 1’s feet poking into another’s ear ! Yet sleep came & brought oblivion from the pain of the outside world. Light sleepers could now even sleep next to a grinding machine!

Prisoners were given uniforms made of rags which would even make a scarecrow look elegant. They would have to keep wearing the same set of shirts & pants for months until the clothes gave up all appearances/resemblances of being shirts/pants. The only way to stay alive in the camp was to look healthy & young. So, even if you hadn’t eaten anything for a few days you still had to atleast shave daily – prisoners would end up exchanging their food for razors & soap or else they would end up shaving with glass.

Prisoners would be regularly transported from 1 camp(implying 1 work site to another) to another in trains so cramped that they would have to keep standing as there was barely any space to sit & they would still be happy looking at glimpses of the outside world from the only window (which was tiny as a keyhole) taking turns to look outside, unknowing of where their destiny is taking them.

Upon arrival in a new camp they were marched down in a single line with a commander at d end of it just pointing right or left directions at them. Little did they know that this little finger was to decide their existence in the world. Those sent in the left direction were annihilated in the gas chambers & the 1’s to the right were allowed to live in their misery. A particular incident described by the author in the book was that once when the new arrivals were being counted & they found 1 to be missin – the remaining prisoners were made to stand bare feet in blistering snowfall while the search continued all night. They guards finally found him sleeping in 1 of the camp hutments. They were all left languishing all night & lashed but they were still happy because they had just found out the camp didn’t have any gas chambers !



Astonishingly they never caught cold or fell sick – maybe from the fear of the consequences. They never cleaned their teeth but had better & stronger gums than before. Their inductions into camps started with stripping off all their clothes, then shaving their heads & showers in chilling water. Yet again they were still happy as there was atleast real water dripping from those showers. Their lives were as exciting as it could get & they always had a feeling of curiosity – unknowing of what’s next.



Prisoners were even punished for falling sick. How to consume their daily food assignment was a dilemma too, whether to eat it all at 1 go & squash d hunger or split what they had spread across the day for pangs of hunger. Once the author was awakened by the sounds of another inmate – the prisoner was asleep & was screaming, groaning in his dreams. So, Dr. Frankl almost made the un-forgivable mistake of waking up the man as he personally himself found painful dreams very disturbing. So, he walked up to the prisoner & was just about to shake the man to wake him up when he drew his hand back realizing that no dream (no matter how dreadful & horrifying) could be worse than the reality around them.



Despite all this pain & suffering they had their share of fun too. I was in awe when I read this part of the book – it goes to show how innovative a human mind can get when necessary. They invented games like “Flat spit” or round ball spit – judging how far can a person spit ! They had reached such extents of misery that when a fellow companion/inmate died – all they would do was immediately grab whatever they could off his body. The guards didn’t even feel it worthy enough to a abuse at the inmates or shout/lash then & hence all they did was simply throw stones at them. Beatings occurred at the slightest provocation or even nothing sometimes. Once Dr. Victor was standing in queue for breakfast just a little tilted towards one side as his legs hurt – even this lack of symmetry unpleased the guards & they lashed him. At such moments it’s not the physical pain which hurts but the mental agony of getting beaten up for no fault of your’s (the injustice & the un-reasonableness of things)...