From Death-camp to Existentialism

📖 The Scoop

In pt. 1 (pp. 1-93), "Experiences in a Concentration Camp", Frankl recounts his everyday life as a prisoner in Auschwitz and in a sub-camp of Dachau. He does not give any details about how and when he was arrested and deported, and only mentions in passing that his wife perished in the Holocaust. He focuses on psychological observations of the inmates' mental reactions, which he divides into three phases. The period following admission is characterized by shock, the period when the inmate is well entrenched by relative apathy, and the period following his release by depersonalization. Discusses, also, man's attitude toward his existence when it is restricted by external forces, and man's search for meaning. Concludes that what was ultimately responsible for the state of the prisoner's inner self was not so much the enumerated psychological causes as his free decisions. Only those who allowed their "inner hold" of their moral and spiritual selves to subside fell victim to the camps' degenerating influence. Frankl worked at digging ditches and laying tracks for railway lines; he was not employed as a psychiatrist or doctor, except for the last few weeks before the liberation.

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