One of the most revealing memories shared by the renowned psychiatrist was the case of one of their comrades bursting into the barracks full of prisoners exhausted from hours of labour. He called them out to watch a breathtakingly stunning sunset:
"Having stepped out, we saw an ominous storm brewing in the west, and the entire sky filled with clouds that came to life constantly changing shapes and colours, from grey and steel-blue to blood-red. The deserted clay huts contrasted sharply with this view, and the muddy puddles on the ground reflected the shining sky"...
How beautiful the world can be!" -one of the inmates exclaimed. Perhaps this phrase expresses Frankl's entire philosophy. Logotherapy does not promise a brighter future full of beautiful sunsets, but reminds us that at any particular moment you should find something to live for.
For it depends on an individual whether he or she would turn their camp life into misery, as thousands did, or a moral victory, as few did.
"One could say that most of the prisoners believed that all possibilities for self-fulfilment had been already exhausted, however, they were just opening up," -Frankl wrote.
Method refining and proof of concept
On the way to the concentration camp
It was in the midst of the horror of the Nazi camps that Frankl's logotherapy took its final form.
Viktor had miraculously survived several life-threatening situations, endured hardship, illness, lost all his relatives and his beloved wife, but remained true to his humanist philosophy and found meaning in helping others - at that timeas well as thereafter.
In the camp Frankl was analysing the prisoners' responses to the nightmare around them, thus enriching his theory, and saw the meaning of his own suffering in it.
His only purpose in life was to survive in confinement, everything else fell by the wayside. But Frankl stressed the importance of not losing one’s humanity, of not surrendering to fate, of not becoming a scoundrel. And even when death seemed inevitable, he kept insisting that there was always a chance to survive.
In every camp to which he was transferred, Frankl tried to help other prisoners and ease their suffering. Together with other imprisoned doctors, he created the shock squad, a group that helped newcomers overcome the initial shock of encountering the horrors of camp life.
Every day Viktor evoked positive emotions in the exhausted people around him and convinced them that it was crucial to find meaning even in the most difficult conditions.
The idea of collective guilt was unacceptable to Frankl. He refused to admit that all SS members were monsters, citing the example of the Turckheim camp commander, who secretly helped prisoners often putting his own life at risk. And that was another moral victory of the humanist philosopher over Nazism.
On 27 April 1945, Frankl’s camp was liberated by the Allies. The Americans appointed him the chief physician at the hospital for rescued prisoners in Bavaria, where he worked for two months, following which he spent another two months lecturing on rehabilitation problems on the radio.
Every day Viktor evoked positive emotions in the exhausted people around him and convinced them that it was crucial to find meaning even in the most difficult conditions
The idea of collective guilt was unacceptable to Frankl. He refused to admit that all SS members were monsters, citing the example of the Turckheim camp commander, who secretly helped prisoners often putting his own life at risk. And that was another moral victory of the humanist philosopher over Nazism