was weak and exhausted from a serious attack of typhus. Then I
went back to my lonely place on the wood cover of the water shaft.
This shaft, incidentally, once saved the lives of three fellow
prisoners. Shortly before liberation, mass transports were organized
to go to Dachau, and these three prisoners wisely tried to avoid the
trip. They climbed down the shaft and hid there from the guards. I
calmly sat on the lid, looking innocent and playing a childish game
of throwing pebbles at the barbed wire. On spotting me, the guard
hesitated for a moment, but then passed on. Soon I could tell the
three men below that the worst danger was over.
It is very di cult for an outsider to grasp how very little value was
placed on human life in camp. The camp inmate was hardened, but
possibly became more conscious of this complete disregard of human
existence when a convoy of sick men was arranged. The emaciated
bodies of the sick were thrown on two-wheeled carts which were
drawn by prisoners for many miles, often through snowstorms, to the
next camp. If one of the sick men had died before the cart left, he
was thrown on anyway—the list had to be correct! The list was the
only thing that mattered. A man counted only because he had a
prison number. One literally became a number: dead or alive—that
was unimportant; the life of a “number” was completely irrelevant.
What stood behind that number and that life mattered even less: the
fate, the history, the name of the man. In the transport of sick
patients that I, in my capacity as a doctor, had to accompany from
one camp in Bavaria to another, there was a young prisoner whose
brother was not on the list and therefore would have to be left
behind. The young man begged so long that the camp warden
decided to work an exchange, and the brother took the place of a
man who, at the moment, preferred to stay behind. But the list had
to be correct! That was easy. The brother just exchanged numbers
with the other prisoner.
As I have mentioned before, we had no documents; everyone was
lucky to own his body, which, after all, was still breathing. All else
about us, i.e., the rags hanging from our gaunt skeletons, was only of
interest if we were assigned to a transport of sick patients. The
departing “Moslems” were examined with unabashed curiosity to see
whether their coats or shoes were not better than one’s own. After
all, their fates were sealed. But those who stayed behind in camp,
who were still capable of some work, had to make use of every
means to improve their chances of survival. They were not
sentimental. The prisoners saw themselves completely dependent on
the moods of the guards—playthings of fate—and this made them
even less human than the circumstances warranted.
In Auschwitz I had laid down a rule for myself which proved to be a
good one and which most of my comrades later followed. I generally
answered all kinds of questions truthfully. But I was silent about
anything that was not expressly asked for. If I were asked my age, I
gave it. If asked about my profession, I said “doctor,” but did not
elaborate. The rst morning in Auschwitz an SS o cer came to the
parade ground. We had to fall into separate groups of prisoners:
over forty years, under forty years, metal workers, mechanics, and so
forth. Then we were examined for ruptures and some prisoners had
to form a new group. The group that I was in was driven to another
hut, where we lined up again. After being sorted out once more and
having answered questions as to my age and profession, I was sent
to another small group. Once more we were driven to another hut
and grouped di erently. This continued for some time, and I became
quite unhappy,
nding myself among strangers who spoke
unintelligible foreign languages. Then came the last selection, and I
found myself back in the group that had been with me in the rst
hut! They had barely noticed that I had been sent from hut to hut in
the meantime. But I was aware that in those few minutes fate had
passed me in many different forms.
When the transport of sick patients for the “rest camp” was
organized, my name (that is, my number) was put on the list, since a
few doctors were needed. But no one was convinced that the
destination was really a rest camp. A few weeks previously the same
transport had been prepared. Then, too, everyone had thought that it
was destined for the gas ovens. When it was announced that anyone
who volunteered for the dreaded night shift would be taken o the
transport list, eighty-two prisoners volunteered immediately. A
quarter of an hour later the transport was canceled, but the eightytwo stayed on the list for the night shift. For the majority of them,
this meant death within the next fortnight.
Now the transport for the rest camp was arranged for the second
time. Again no one knew whether this was a ruse to obtain the last
bit of work from the sick—if only for fourteen days—or whether it
would go to the gas ovens or to a genuine rest camp. The chief
doctor, who had taken a liking to me, told me furtively one evening
at a quarter to ten, “I have made it known in the orderly room that
you can still have your name crossed o the list; you may do so up
till ten o’clock.”
I told him that this was not my way; that I had learned to let fate
take its course. “I might as well stay with my friends,” I said. There
was a look of pity in his eyes, as if he knew…. He shook my hand
silently, as though it were a farewell, not for life, but from life.
Slowly I walked back to my hut. There I found a good friend waiting
for me.
“You really want to go with them?” he asked sadly.
“Yes, I am going.”
Tears came to his eyes and I tried to comfort him. Then there was
something else to do—to make my will:
“Listen, Otto, if I don’t get back home to my wife, and if you
should see her again, then tell her that I talked of her daily, hourly.
You remember. Secondly, I have loved her more than anyone.
Thirdly, the short time I have been married to her outweighs
everything, even all we have gone through here.”
Otto, where are you now? Are you alive? What has happened to
you since our last hour together? Did you nd your wife again? And
do you remember how I made you learn my will by heart—word for
word—in spite of your childlike tears?
The next morning I departed with the transport. This time it was
not a ruse. We were not heading for the gas chambers, and we
actually did go to a rest camp. Those who had pitied me remained in
a camp where famine was to rage even more ercely than in our
new camp. They tried to save themselves, but they only sealed their
own fates. Months later, after liberation, I met a friend from the old
camp. He related to me how he, as camp policeman, had searched
for a piece of human esh that was missing from a pile of corpses.
He con scated it from a pot in which he found it cooking.
Cannibalism had broken out. I had left just in time.
Does this not bring to mind the story of Death in Teheran? A rich
and mighty Persian once walked in his garden with one of his
servants. The servant cried that he had just encountered Death, who
had threatened him. He begged his master to give him his fastest
horse so that he could make haste and ee to Teheran, which he
could reach that same evening. The master consented and the
servant galloped o on the horse. On returning to his house the
master himself met Death, and questioned him, “Why did you terrify
and threaten my servant?” “I did not threaten him; I only showed
surprise in still nding him here when I planned to meet him tonight
in Teheran,” said Death.
The camp inmate was frightened of making decisions and of taking
any sort of initiative whatsoever. This was the result of a strong
feeling that fate was one’s master, and that one must not try to
in uence it in any way, but instead let it take its own course. In
addition, there was a great apathy, which contributed in no small
part to the feelings of the prisoner. At times, lightning decisions had
to be made, decisions which spelled life or death. The prisoner would
have preferred to let fate make the choice for him. This escape from
commitment was most apparent when a prisoner had to make the
decision for or against an escape attempt. In those minutes in which
he had to make up his mind—and it was always a question of
minutes—he su ered the tortures of Hell. Should he make the
attempt to flee? Should he take the risk?
I, too, experienced this torment. As the battle-front drew nearer, I
had the opportunity to escape. A colleague of mine who had to visit
huts outside the camp in the course of his medical duties wanted to
escape and take me with him. Under the pretense of holding a
consultation about a patient whose illness required a specialist’s
advice, he smuggled me out. Outside the camp, a member of a
foreign resistance movement was to supply us with uniforms and
documents. At the last moment there were some technical di culties
and we had to return to camp once more. We used this opportunity
to provide ourselves with provisions—a few rotten potatoes—and to
look for a rucksack.
We broke into an empty hut of the women’s camp, which was
vacant, as the women had been sent to another camp. The hut was in
great disorder; it was obvious that many women had acquired
supplies and ed. There were rags, straw, rotting food, and broken
crockery. Some bowls were still in good condition and would have
been very valuable to us, but we decided not to take them. We knew
that lately, as conditions had become desperate, they had been used
not only for food, but also as washbasins and chamber pots. (There
was a strictly enforced rule against having any kind of utensil in the
hut. However, some people were forced to break this rule, especially
the typhus patients, who were much too weak to go outside even
with help.) While I acted as a screen, my friend broke into the hut
and returned shortly with a rucksack which he hid under his coat. He
had seen another one inside which I was to take. So we changed
places and I went in. As I searched in the rubbish, nding the
rucksack and even a toothbrush, I suddenly saw, among all the
things that had been left behind, the body of a woman.
I ran back to my hut to collect all my possessions: my food bowl, a
pair of torn mittens “inherited” from a dead typhus patient, and a
few scraps of paper covered with shorthand notes (on which, as I
mentioned before, I had started to reconstruct the manuscript which I
lost at Auschwitz). I made a quick last round of my patients, who
were lying huddled on the rotten planks of wood on either side of the
huts. I came to my only countryman, who was almost dying, and
whose life it had been my ambition to save in spite of his condition. I
had to keep my intention to escape to myself, but my comrade
seemed to guess that something was wrong (perhaps I showed a little
nervousness). In a tired voice he asked me, “You, too, are getting
out?” I denied it, but I found it di cult to avoid his sad look. After
my round I returned to him. Again a hopeless look greeted me and
somehow I felt it to be an accusation. The unpleasant feeling that
had gripped me as soon as I had told my friend I would escape with
him became more intense. Suddenly I decided to take fate into my
own hands for once. I ran out of the hut and told my friend that I
could not go with him. As soon as I had told him with nality that I
had made up my mind to stay with my patients, the unhappy feeling
left me. I did not know what the following days would bring, but I
had gained an inward peace that I had never experienced before. I
returned to the hut, sat down on the boards at my countryman’s feet
and tried to comfort him; then I chatted with the others, trying to
quiet them in their delirium.
Our last day in camp arrived. As the battle-front came nearer,
mass transports had taken nearly all the prisoners to other camps.
The camp authorities, the Capos and the cooks had ed. On this day
an order was given that the camp must be evacuated completely by
sunset. Even the few remaining prisoners (the sick, a few doctors,
and some “nurses”) would have to leave. At night, the camp was to
be set on re. In the afternoon the trucks which were to collect the
sick had not yet appeared. Instead the camp gates were suddenly
closed and the barbed wire closely watched, so that no one could
attempt an escape. The remaining prisoners seemed to be destined to
burn with the camp. For the second time my friend and I decided to
escape.
We had been given an order to bury three men outside the barbed
wire fence. We were the only two in camp who had strength enough
to do the job. Nearly all the others lay in the few huts which were
still in use, prostrate with fever and delirium. We now made our
plans: along with the rst body we would smuggle out my friend’s
rucksack, hiding it in the old laundry tub which served as a co n.
When we took out the second body we would also carry out my
rucksack, and on the third trip we intended to make our escape. The
rst two trips went according to plan. After we returned, I waited
while my friend tried to nd a piece of bread so that we would have
something to eat during the next few days in the woods. I waited.
Minutes passed. I became more and more impatient as he did not
return. After three years of imprisonment, I was picturing freedom
joyously, imagining how wonderful it would be to run toward the
battle-front. But we did not get that far.
The very moment when my friend came back, the camp gate was
thrown open. A splendid, aluminum-colored car, on which were
painted large red crosses, slowly rolled on to the parade ground. A
delegate from the International Red Cross in Geneva had arrived,
and the camp and its inmates were under his protection. The
delegate billeted himself in a farmhouse in the vicinity, in order to be
near the camp at all times in case of emergency. Who worried about
escape now? Boxes with medicines were unloaded from the car,
cigarettes were distributed, we were photographed and joy reigned
supreme. Now there was no need for us to risk running toward the
fighting line.
In our excitement we had forgotten the third body, so we carried it
outside and dropped it into the narrow grave we had dug for the
three corpses. The guard who accompanied us—a relatively
ino ensive man—suddenly became quite gentle. He saw that the
tables might be turned and tried to win our goodwill. He joined in
the short prayers that we o ered for the dead men before throwing
soil over them. After the tension and excitement of the past days and
hours, those last days in our race with death, the words of our prayer
asking for peace, were as fervent as any ever uttered by the human
voice.
And so the last day in camp passed in anticipation of freedom. But
we had rejoiced too early. The Red Cross delegate had assured us that
an agreement had been signed, and that the camp must not be
evacuated. But that night the SS arrived with trucks and brought an
order to clear the camp. The last remaining prisoners were to be
taken to a central camp, from which they would be sent to
Switzerland within forty-eight hours—to be exchanged for some
prisoners of war. We scarcely recognized the SS. They were so
friendly, trying to persuade us to get in the trucks without fear,
telling us that we should be grateful for our good luck. Those who
were strong enough crowded into the trucks and the seriously ill and
feeble were lifted up with di culty. My friend and I—we did not hide
our rucksacks now—stood in the last group, from which thirteen
would be chosen for the next to last truck. The chief doctor counted
out the requisite number, but he omitted the two of us. The thirteen
were loaded into the truck and we had to stay behind. Surprised,
very annoyed and disappointed, we blamed the chief doctor, who
excused himself by saying that he had been tired and distracted. He
said that he had thought we still intended to escape. Impatiently we
sat down, keeping our rucksacks on our backs, and waited with the
few remaining prisoners for the last truck. We had to wait a long
time. Finally we lay down on the mattresses of the deserted guardroom, exhausted by the excitement of the last few hours and days,
during which we had uctuated continu- ally between hope and
despair. We slept in our clothes and shoes, ready for the journey.
The noise of ri es and cannons woke us; the ashes of tracer
bullets and gun shots entered the hut. The chief doc- tor dashed in
and ordered us to take cover on the oor. One prisoner jumped on
my stomach from the bed above me and with his shoes on. That
awakened me all right! Then we grasped what was happening: the
battle-front had reached us! The shooting decreased and morning
dawned. Outside on the pole at the camp gate a white ag oated in
the wind.
Many weeks later we found out that even in those last hours fate had
toyed with us few remaining prisoners. We found out just how
uncertain human decisions are, especially in matters of life and
death. I was confronted with photographs which had been taken in a
small camp not far from ours. Our friends who had thought they
were traveling to freedom that night had been taken in the trucks to
this camp, and there they were locked in the huts and burned to
death. Their partially charred bodies were recognizable on the
photograph. I thought again of Death in Teheran.
Apart from its role as a defensive mechanism, the prisoners’ apathy
was also the result of other factors. Hunger and lack of sleep
contributed to it (as they do in normal life, also) and to the general
irritability which was another characteristic of the prisoners’ mental
state. The lack of sleep was due partly to the pestering of vermin
which infested the terribly overcrowded huts because of the general
lack of hygiene and sanitation. The fact that we had neither nicotine
nor caffeine also contributed to the state of apathy and irritability.
Besides these physical causes, there were mental ones, in the form
of certain complexes. The majority of prisoners su ered from a kind
of inferiority complex. We all had once been or had fancied ourselves
to be “somebody.” Now we were treated like complete nonentities.
(The consciousness of one’s inner value is anchored in higher, more
spiritual things, and cannot be shaken by camp life. But how many
free men, let alone prisoners, possess it?) Without consciously
thinking about it, the average prisoner felt himself utterly degraded.
This became obvious when one observed the contrasts o ered by the
singular sociological structure of the camp. The more “prominent”
prisoners, the Capos, the cooks, the store-keepers and the camp
policemen, did not, as a rule, feel degraded at all, like the majority
of prisoners, but on the contrary—promoted! Some even developed
miniature delusions of grandeur. The mental reaction of the envious
and grumbling majority toward this favored minority found
expression in several ways, sometimes in jokes. For instance, I heard
one prisoner talk to another about a Capo, saying, “Imagine! I knew
that man when he was only the president of a large bank. Isn’t it
fortunate that he has risen so far in the world?”
Whenever the degraded majority and the promoted minority came
into con ict (and there were plenty of opportunities for this, starting
with the distribution of food) the results were explosive. Therefore,
the general irritability (whose physical causes were discussed above)
became most intense when these mental tensions were added. It is
not surprising that this tension often ended in a general ght. Since
the prisoner continually witnessed scenes of beatings, the impulse
toward violence was increased. I myself felt my sts clench when
anger came over me while I was famished and tired. I was usually
very tired, since we had to stoke our stove—which we were allowed
to keep in our hut for the typhus patients—throughout the nights.
However, some of the most idyllic hours I have ever spent were in
the middle of the night when all the others were delirious or
sleeping. I could lie stretched out in front of the stove and roast a
few pilfered potatoes in a re made from stolen charcoal. But the
following day I always felt even more tired, insensitive and irritable.
While I was working as a doctor in the typhus block, I also had to
take the place of the senior block warden who was ill. Therefore, I
was responsible to the camp authority for keeping the hut clean—if
“clean” can be used to describe such a condition. The pretense at
inspection to which the hut was frequently submitted was more for
the purpose of torture than of hygiene. More food and a few drugs
would have helped, but the only concern of the inspectors was
whether a piece of straw was left in the center corridor, or whether
the dirty, ragged and verminous blankets of the patients were tucked
in neatly at their feet. As to the fate of the inmates, they were quite
unconcerned. If I reported smartly, whipping my prison cap from my
shorn head and clicking my heels, “Hut number VI/9: 52 patients,
two nursing orderlies, and one doctor,” they were satis ed. And then
they would leave. But until they arrived—often they were hours later
than announced, and sometimes did not come at all—I was forced to
keep straightening blankets, picking up bits of straw which fell from
the bunks, and shouting at the poor devils who tossed in their beds
and threatened to upset all my e orts at tidiness and cleanliness.
Apathy was particularly increased among the feverish patients, so
that they did not react at all unless they were shouted at. Even this
failed at times, and then it took tremendous self-control not to strike
them. For one’s own irritability took on enormous proportions in the
face of the other’s apathy and especially in the face of the danger
(i.e., the approaching inspection) which was caused by it.
In
attempting
this
psychological
presentation
and
a
psychopathological explanation of the typical characteristics of a
concentration camp inmate, I may give the impression that the
human being is completely and unavoidably in uenced by his
surroundings. (In this case the surroundings being the unique
structure of camp life, which forced the prisoner to conform his
conduct to a certain set pattern.) But what about human liberty? Is
there no spiritual freedom in regard to behavior and reaction to any
given surroundings? Is that theory true which would have us believe
that man is no more than a product of many conditional and
environmental factors—be they of a biological, psychological or
sociological nature? Is man but an accidental product of these? Most
important, do the prisoners’ reactions to the singular world of the
concentration camp prove that man cannot escape the in uences of
his surroundings? Does man have no choice of action in the face of
such circumstances?
We can answer these questions from experience as well as on
principle. The experiences of camp life show that man does have a
choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic
nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability
suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of
independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic
and physical stress.
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who
walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last
piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they o er
su cient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one
thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in
any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour,
o ered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which
determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers
which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom;
which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of
circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded
into the form of the typical inmate.
Seen from this point of view, the mental reactions of the inmates
of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere
expression of certain physical and sociological conditions. Even
though conditions such as lack of sleep, insu cient food and various
mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in
certain ways, in the nal analysis it becomes clear that the sort of
person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and
not the result of camp in uences alone. Fundamentally, therefore,
any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall
become of him—mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human
dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, “There
is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my su erings.”
These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted
with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose su ering and
death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be
lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their su erings; the way
they bore their su ering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this
spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life
meaningful and purposeful.
An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to
realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment
a ords him the opportunity to obtain ful llment in experiencing
beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is
almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of
but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude
to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative
life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only
creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in
life at all, then there must be a meaning in su ering. Su ering is an
ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without su ering
and death human life cannot be complete.
The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the su ering it
entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample
opportunity—even under the most di cult circumstances—to add a
deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, digni ed and
unsel sh. Or in the bitter ght for self-preservation he may forget his
human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the
chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities
of attaining the moral values that a diffcult situation may afford him.
And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.
Do not think that these considerations are unworldly and too far
removed from real life. It is true that only a few peo- ple are capable
of reaching such high moral standards. Of the prisoners only a few
kept their full inner liberty and obtained those values which their
su ering a orded, but even one such example is su cient proof that
man’s inner strength may raise him above his outward fate. Such
men are not only in concentration camps. Everywhere man is
confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something
through his own suffering.
Take the fate of the sick—especially those who are incurable. I
once read a letter written by a young invalid, in which he told a
friend that he had just found out he would not live for long, that
even an operation would be of no help. He wrote further that he
remembered a lm he had seen in which a man was portrayed who
waited for death in a courageous and digni ed way. The boy had
thought it a great accomplishment to meet death so well. Now—he
wrote—fate was offering him a similar chance.
Those of us who saw the lm called Resurrection—taken from a
book by Tolstoy—years ago, may have had similar thoughts. Here
were great destinies and great men. For us, at that time, there was
no great fate; there was no chance to achieve such greatness. After
the picture we went to the nearest café, and over a cup of co ee and
a sandwich we forgot the strange metaphysical thoughts which for
one moment had crossed our minds. But when we ourselves were
confronted with a great destiny and faced with the decision of
meeting it with equal spiritual greatness, by then we had forgotten
our youthful resolutions of long ago, and we failed.
Perhaps there came a day for some of us when we saw the same
lm again, or a similar one. But by then other pictures may have
simultaneously unrolled before one’s inner eye; pictures of people
who attained much more in their lives than a sentimental lm could
show. Some details of a particular man’s inner greatness may have
come to one’s mind, like the story of the young woman whose death I
witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story. There is little
to tell and it may sound as if I had invented it; but to me it seems
like a poem.
This young woman knew that she would die in the next few days.
But when I talked to her she was cheerful in spite of this knowledge.
“I am grateful that fate has hit me so hard,” she told me. “In my
former life I was spoiled and did not take spiritual accomplishments
seriously.” Pointing through the window of the hut, she said, “This
tree here is the only friend I have in my loneliness.” Through that
window she could see just one branch of a chestnut tree, and on the
branch were two blossoms. “I often talk to this tree,” she said to me.
I was startled and didn’t quite know how to take her words. Was she
delirious? Did she have occasional hallucinations? Anxiously I asked
her if the tree replied. “Yes.” What did it say to her? She answered,
“It said to me, ‘I am here—I am here—I am life, eternal life.’”
We have stated that that which was ultimately responsible for the
state of the prisoner’s inner self was not so much the enumerated
psychophysical causes as it was the result of a free decision.
Psychological observations of the prisoners have shown that only the
men who allowed their inner hold on their moral and spiritual selves
to subside eventually fell victim to the camp’s degenerating
in uences. The question now arises, what could, or should, have
constituted this “inner hold”?
Former prisoners, when writing or relating their experiences,
agree that the most depressing in uence of all was that a prisoner
could not know how long his term of imprisonment would be. He had
been given no date for his release. (In our camp it was pointless
even to talk about it.) Actually a prison term was not only uncertain
but unlimited. A well-known research psychologist has pointed out
that life in a concentration camp could be called a “provisional
existence.” We can add to this by de ning it as a “provisional
existence of unknown limit.”
New arrivals usually knew nothing about the conditions at a camp.
Those who had come back from other camps were obliged to keep
silent, and from some camps no one had returned. On entering camp
a change took place in the minds of the men. With the end of
uncertainty there came the uncertainty of the end. It was impossible
to foresee whether or when, if at all, this form of existence would
end.
The Latin word finis has two meanings: the end or the nish, and a
goal to reach. A man who could not see the end of his “provisional
existence” was not able to aim at an ultimate goal in life. He ceased
living for the future, in contrast to a man in normal life. Therefore
the whole structure of his inner life changed; signs of decay set in
which we know from other areas of life. The unemployed worker, for
example, is in a similar position. His existence has become
provisional and in a certain sense he cannot live for the future or
aim at a goal. Research work done on unemployed miners has shown
that they su er from a peculiar sort of deformed time—inner time—
which is a result of their unemployed state. Prisoners, too, su ered
from this strange “time-experience.” In camp, a small time unit, a
day, for example, lled with hourly tortures and fatigue, appeared
endless. A larger time unit, perhaps a week, seemed to pass very
quickly. My comrades agreed when I said that in camp a day lasted
longer than a week. How paradoxical was our time-experience! In
this connection we are reminded of Thomas Mann’s The Magic
Mountain, which contains some very pointed psychological remarks.
Mann studies the spiritual development of people who are in an
analogous psychological position, i.e., tuberculosis patients in a
sanatorium who also know no date for their release. They experience
a similar existence—without a future and without a goal.
One of the prisoners, who on his arrival marched with a long
column of new inmates from the station to the camp, told me later
that he had felt as though he were marching at his own funeral. His
life had seemed to him absolutely without future. He regarded it as
over and done, as if he had already died. This feeling of lifelessness
was intensi ed by other causes: in time, it was the limitlessness of
the term of imprisonment which was most acutely felt; in space, the
narrow limits of the prison. Anything outside the barbed wire
became remote—out of reach and, in a way, unreal. The events and
the people outside, all the normal life there, had a ghostly aspect for
the prisoner. The outside life, that is, as much as he could see of it,
appeared to him almost as it might have to a dead man who looked
at it from another world.
A man who let himself decline because he could not see any future
goal found himself occupied with retrospective thoughts. In a
di erent connection, we have already spoken of the tendency there
was to look into the past, to help make the present, with all its
horrors, less real. But in robbing the present of its reality there lay a
certain danger. It became easy to overlook the opportunities to make
something positive of camp life, opportunities which really did exist.
Regarding our “provisional existence” as unreal was in itself an
important factor in causing the prisoners to lose their hold on life;
everything in a way became pointless. Such people forgot that often
it is just such an exceptionally di cult external situation which gives
man the opportunity to grow spiritually beyond himself. Instead of
taking the camp’s di culties as a test of their inner strength, they did
not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no
consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and to live in the
past. Life for such people became meaningless.
Naturally only a few people were capable of reaching great
spiritual heights. But a few were given the chance to attain human
greatness even through their apparent worldly fail- ure and death,
an accomplishment which in ordinary circumstances they would
never have achieved. To the others of us, the mediocre and the halfhearted, the words of Bismarck could be applied: “Life is like being at
the dentist. You always think that the worst is still to come, and yet
it is over already.” Varying this, we could say that most men in a
concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had
passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge.
One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an
inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply
vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.
Any attempt at ghting the camp’s psychopathological in uence on
the prisoner by psychotherapeutic or psychohygienic methods had to
aim at giving him inner strength by pointing out to him a future goal
to which he could look forward. Instinctively some of the prisoners
attempted to nd one on their own. It is a peculiarity of man that he
can only live by looking to the future—sub specie aeternitatis. And
this is his salvation in the most di cult moments of his existence,
although he sometimes has to force his mind to the task.
I remember a personal experience. Almost in tears from pain (I
had terrible sores on my feet from wearing torn shoes), I limped a
few kilometers with our long column of men from the camp to our
work site. Very cold, bitter winds struck us. I kept thinking of the
endless little problems of our miserable life. What would there be to
eat tonight? If a piece of sausage came as extra ration, should I
exchange it for a piece of bread? Should I trade my last cigarette,
which was left from a bonus I received a fortnight ago, for a bowl of
soup? How could I get a piece of wire to replace the fragment which
served as one of my shoelaces? Would I get to our work site in time
to join my usual working party or would I have to join another,
which might have a brutal foreman? What could I do to get on good
terms with the Capo, who could help me to obtain work in camp
instead of undertaking this horribly long daily march?
I became disgusted with the state of a airs which compelled me,
daily and hourly, to think of only such trivial things. I forced my
thoughts to turn to another subject. Suddenly I saw myself standing
on the platform of a well-lit, warm and pleasant lecture room. In
front of me sat an attentive audience on comfortable upholstered
seats. I was giving a lecture on the psychology of the concentration
camp! All that oppressed me at that moment became objective, seen
and described from the remote viewpoint of science. By this method I
succeeded somehow in rising above the situation, above the
su erings of the moment, and I observed them as if they were
already of the past. Both I and my troubles became the object of an
interesting psychoscienti c study undertaken by myself. What does
Spinoza say in his Ethics? —“A ectus, qui passio est, desinit esse passio
simulatque eius claram et distinctam formamus ideam.” Emotion, which
is su ering, ceases to be su ering as soon as we form a clear and
precise picture of it.
The prisoner who had lost faith in the future—his future—was
doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual
hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and
physical decay. Usually this happened quite suddenly, in the form of
a crisis, the symptoms of which were familiar to the experienced
camp inmate. We all feared this moment—not for ourselves, which
would have been pointless, but for our friends. Usually it began with
the prisoner refusing one morning to get dressed and wash or to go
out on the parade grounds. No entreaties, no blows, no threats had
any e ect. He just lay there, hardly moving. If this crisis was brought
about by an illness, he refused to be taken to the sick-bay or to do
anything to help himself. He simply gave up. There he remained,
lying in his own excreta, and nothing bothered him any more.
I once had a dramatic demonstration of the close link between the
loss of faith in the future and this dangerous giving up. F——, my
senior block warden, a fairly well-known composer and librettist,
con ded in me one day: “I would like to tell you something, Doctor. I
have had a strange dream. A voice told me that I could wish for
something, that I should only say what I wanted to know, and all my
questions would be answered. What do you think I asked? That I
would like to know when the war would be over for me. You know
what I mean, Doctor—for me! I wanted to know when we, when our
camp, would be liberated and our sufferings come to an end.”
“And when did you have this dream?” I asked.
“In February, 1945,” he answered. It was then the beginning of
March.
“What did your dream voice answer?”
Furtively he whispered to me, “March thirtieth.”
When F—— told me about his dream, he was still full of hope and
convinced that the voice of his dream would be right. But as the
promised day drew nearer, the war news which reached our camp
made it appear very unlikely that we would be free on the promised
date. On March twenty-ninth, F—— suddenly became ill and ran a
high temperature. On March thirtieth, the day his prophecy had told
him that the war and su ering would be over for him, he became
delirious and lost consciousness. On March thirty- rst, he was dead.
To all outward appearances, he had died of typhus.
Those who know how close the connection is between the state of
mind of a man—his courage and hope, or lack of them—and the
state of immunity of his body will understand that the sudden loss of
hope and courage can have a deadly e ect. The ultimate cause of my
friend’s death was that the expected liberation did not come and he
was severely disappointed. This suddenly lowered his body’s
resistance against the latent typhus infection. His faith in the future
and his will to live had become paralyzed and his body fell victim to
illness—and thus the voice of his dream was right after all.
The observations of this one case and the conclusion drawn from
them are in accordance with something that was drawn to my
attention by the chief doctor of our concentration camp. The death
rate in the week between Christmas, 1944, and New Year’s, 1945,
increased in camp beyond all previous experience. In his opinion, the
explanation for this increase did not lie in the harder working
conditions or the deterioration of our food supplies or a change of
weather or new epidemics. It was simply that the majority of the
prisoners had lived in the naïve hope that they would be home again
by Christmas. As the time drew near and there was no encouraging
news, the prisoners lost courage and disappointment overcame them.
This had a dangerous in uence on their powers of resistance and a
great number of them died.
As we said before, any attempt to restore a man’s inner strength in
the camp had rst to succeed in showing him some future goal.
Nietzsche’s words, “He who has a why to live for can bear with
almost
any how,” could be the guiding motto for all
psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic e orts regarding prisoners.
Whenever there was an opportunity for it, one had to give them a
why—an aim—for their lives, in order to strengthen them to bear the
terrible how of their existence. Woe to him who saw no more sense in
his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on.
He was soon lost. The typical reply with which such a man rejected
all encouraging arguments was, “I have nothing to expect from life
any more.” What sort of answer can one give to that?
What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude
toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to
teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we
expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to
stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of
ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and
hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in
right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the
responsibility to nd the right answer to its problems and to ful ll
the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
These tasks, and therefore the meaning of life, di er from man to
man, and from moment to moment. Thus it is impossible to de ne
the meaning of life in a general way. Questions about the meaning
of life can never be answered by sweeping statements. “Life” does
not mean something vague, but something very real and concrete,
just as life’s tasks are also very real and concrete. They form man’s
destiny, which is di erent and unique for each individual. No man
and no destiny can be compared with any other man or any other
destiny. No situation repeats itself, and each situation calls for a
di erent response. Sometimes the situation in which a man nds
himself may require him to shape his own fate by action. At other
times it is more advantageous for him to make use of an opportunity
for contemplation and to realize assets in this way. Sometimes man
may be required simply to accept fate, to bear his cross. Every
situation is distinguished by its uniqueness, and there is always only
one right answer to the problem posed by the situation at hand.
When a man nds that it is his destiny to su er, he will have to
accept his su ering as his task; his single and unique task. He will
have to acknowledge the fact that even in su ering he is unique and
alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his su ering or
su er in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which
he bears his burden.
For us, as prisoners, these thoughts were not speculations far
removed from reality. They were the only thoughts that could be of
help to us. They kept us from despair, even when there seemed to be
no chance of coming out of it alive. Long ago we had passed the
stage of asking what was the meaning of life, a naïve query which
understands life as the attaining of some aim through the active
creation of something of value. For us, the meaning of life embraced
the wider cycles of life and death, of suffering and of dying.
Once the meaning of su ering had been revealed to us, we refused
to minimize or alleviate the camp’s tortures by ignoring them or
harboring false illusions and entertaining arti cial optimism.
Su ering had become a task on which we did not want to turn our
backs. We had realized its hidden opportunities for achievement, the
opportunities which caused the poet Rilke to write, “Wie viel ist
aufzuleiden!” (How much su ering there is to get through!). Rilke
spoke of “getting through su ering” as others would talk of “getting
through work.” There was plenty of su ering for us to get through.
Therefore, it was necessary to face up to the full amount of su ering,
trying to keep moments of weakness and furtive tears to a minimum.
But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness
that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to su er. Only
very few realized that. Shamefacedly some confessed occasionally
that they had wept, like the comrade who answered my question of
how he had gotten over his edema, by confessing, “I have wept it out
of my system.”
The tender beginnings of a psychotherapy or psychohygiene were,
when they were possible at all in the camp, either individual or
collective in nature. The individual psychotherapeutic attempts were
often a kind of “lifesaving procedure.” These e orts were usually
concerned with the prevention of suicides. A very strict camp ruling
forbade any e orts to save a man who attempted suicide. It was
forbidden, for example, to cut down a man who was trying to hang
himself. Therefore, it was all important to prevent these attempts
from occurring.
I remember two cases of would-be suicide, which bore a striking
similarity to each other. Both men had talked of their intentions to
commit suicide. Both used the typical argument —they had nothing
more to expect from life. In both cases it was a question of getting
them to realize that life was still expecting something from them;
something in the future was expected of them. We found, in fact, that
for the one it was his child whom he adored and who was waiting for
him in a foreign country. For the other it was a thing, not a person.
This man was a scientist and had written a series of books which still
needed to be nished. His work could not be done by anyone else,
any more than another person could ever take the place of the father
in his child’s affections.
This uniqueness and singleness which distinguishes each individual
and gives a meaning to his existence has a bearing on creative work
as much as it does on human love. When the impossibility of
replacing a person is realized, it allows the responsibility which a
man has for his existence and its continuance to appear in all its
magnitude. A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he
bears toward a human being who a ectionately waits for him, or to
an un nished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He
knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost
any “how.”
The opportunities for collective psychotherapy were naturally limited
in camp. The right example was more e ective than words could
ever be. A senior block warden who did not side with the authorities
had, by his just and encouraging behavior, a thousand opportunities
to exert a far-reaching moral in uence on those under his
jurisdiction. The immediate in uence of behavior is always more
e ective than that of words. But at times a word was e ective too,
when men- tal receptiveness had been intensi ed by some outer
circumstances. I remember an incident when there was occasion for
psychotherapeutic work on the inmates of a whole hut, due to an
intensi cation of their receptiveness because of a certain external
situation.
It had been a bad day. On parade, an announcement had been
made about the many actions that would, from then on, be regarded
as sabotage and therefore punishable by immediate death by
hanging. Among these were crimes such as cutting small strips from
our old blankets (in order to improvise ankle supports) and very
minor “thefts.” A few days previously a semi-starved prisoner had
broken into the potato store to steal a few pounds of potatoes. The
theft had been discovered and some prisoners had recognized the
“burglar.” When the camp authorities heard about it they ordered
that the guilty man be given up to them or the whole camp would
starve for a day. Naturally the 2,500 men preferred to fast.
On the evening of this day of fasting we lay in our earthen huts—
in a very low mood. Very little was said and every word sounded
irritable. Then, to make matters even worse, the light went out.
Tempers reached their lowest ebb. But our senior block warden was a
wise man. He improvised a little talk about all that was on our minds
at that moment. He talked about the many comrades who had died in
the last few days, either of sickness or of suicide. But he also
mentioned what may have been the real reason for their deaths:
giving up hope. He maintained that there should be some way of
preventing possible future victims from reaching this extreme state.
And it was to me that the warden pointed to give this advice.
God knows, I was not in the mood to give psychological
explanations or to preach any sermons—to o er my comrades a kind
of medical care of their souls. I was cold and hungry, irritable and
tired, but I had to make the e ort and use this unique opportunity.
Encouragement was now more necessary than ever.
So I began by mentioning the most trivial of comforts rst. I said
that even in this Europe in the sixth winter of the Second World War,
our situation was not the most terrible we could think of. I said that
each of us had to ask himself what irreplaceable losses he had
su ered up to then. I speculated that for most of them these losses
had really been few. Whoever was still alive had reason for hope.
Health, family, happiness, professional abilities, fortune, position in
society —all these were things that could be achieved again or
restored. After all, we still had all our bones intact. Whatever we had
gone through could still be an asset to us in the future. And I quoted
from Nietzsche: “Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.” (That
which does not kill me, makes me stronger.)
Then I spoke about the future. I said that to the impartial the
future must seem hopeless. I agreed that each of us could guess for
himself how small were his chances of survival. I told them that
although there was still no typhus epidemic in the camp, I estimated
my own chances at about one in twenty. But I also told them that, in
spite of this, I had no intention of losing hope and giving up. For no
man knew what the future would bring, much less the next hour.
Even if we could not expect any sensational military events in the
next few days, who knew better than we, with our experience of
camps, how great chances sometimes opened up, quite suddenly, at
least for the individual. For instance, one might be attached
unexpectedly to a special group with exceptionally good working
conditions—for this was the kind of thing which constituted the
“luck” of the prisoner.
But I did not only talk of the future and the veil which was drawn
over it. I also mentioned the past; all its joys, and how its light shone
even in the present darkness. Again I quoted a poet—to avoid
sounding like a preacher myself—who had written, “Was Du erlebst,
kann keine Macht der Welt Dir rauben.” (What you have experienced,
no power on earth can take from you.) Not only our experiences, but
all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all
we have su ered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have
brought it into being. Having been is also a kind of being, and
perhaps the surest kind.
Then I spoke of the many opportunities of giving life a meaning. I
told my comrades (who lay motionless, although occasionally a sigh
could be heard) that human life, under any circumstances, never
ceases to have a meaning, and that this in nite meaning of life
includes su ering and dying, privation and death. I asked the poor
creatures who listened to me attentively in the darkness of the hut to
face up to the seriousness of our position. They must not lose hope
but should keep their courage in the certainty that the hopelessness
of our struggle did not detract from its dignity and its meaning. I
said that someone looks down on each of us in di cult hours—a
friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or a God—and he would not
expect us to disappoint him. He would hope to nd us su ering
proudly—not miserably—knowing how to die.
And nally I spoke of our sacri ce, which had meaning in every
case. It was in the nature of this sacri ce that it should appear to be
pointless in the normal world, the world of material success. But in
reality our sacri ce did have a meaning. Those of us who had any
religious faith, I said frankly, could understand without di culty. I
told them of a comrade who on his arrival in camp had tried to make
a pact with Heaven that his su ering and death should save the
human being he loved from a painful end. For this man, su ering
and death were meaningful; his was a sacri ce of the deepest
signi cance. He did not want to die for nothing. None of us wanted
that.
The purpose of my words was to nd a full meaning in our life,
then and there, in that hut and in that practically hopeless situation.
I saw that my e orts had been successful. When the electric bulb
ared up again, I saw the miserable gures of my friends limping
toward me to thank me with tears in their eyes. But I have to confess
here that only too rarely had I the inner strength to make contact
with my companions in su ering and that I must have missed many
opportunities for doing so.
We now come to the third stage of a prisoner’s mental reactions: the
psychology of the prisoner after his liberation. But prior to that we
shall consider a question which the psychologist is asked frequently,
especially when he has personal knowledge of these matters: What
can you tell us about the psychological make-up of the camp guards?
How is it possible that men of esh and blood could treat others as so
many prisoners say they have been treated? Having once heard these
accounts and having come to believe that these things did happen,
one is bound to ask how, psychologically, they could happen. To
answer this question without going into great detail, a few things
must be pointed out:
First, among the guards there were some sadists, sadists in the
purest clinical sense.
Second, these sadists were always selected when a really severe
detachment of guards was needed.
There was great joy at our work site when we had permission to
warm ourselves for a few minutes (after two hours of work in the
bitter frost) in front of a little stove which was fed with twigs and
scraps of wood. But there were always some foremen who found a
great pleasure in taking this comfort from us. How clearly their faces
re ected this pleasure when they not only forbade us to stand there
but turned over the stove and dumped its lovely re into the snow!
When the SS took a dislike to a person, there was always some
special man in their ranks known to have a passion for, and to be
highly specialized in, sadistic torture, to whom the unfortunate
prisoner was sent.
Third, the feelings of the majority of the guards had been dulled by
the number of years in which, in ever-increasing doses, they had
witnessed the brutal methods of the camp. These morally and
mentally hardened men at least refused to take active part in sadistic
measures. But they did not prevent others from carrying them out.
Fourth, it must be stated that even among the guards there were
some who took pity on us. I shall only mention the commander of
the camp from which I was liberated. It was found after the
liberation—only the camp doctor, a prisoner himself, had known of
it previously—that this man had paid no small sum of money from
his own pocket in order to purchase medicines for his prisoners from
the nearest market town.1 But the senior camp warden, a prisoner
himself, was harder than any of the SS guards. He beat the other
prisoners at every slightest opportunity, while the camp commander,
to my knowledge, never once lifted his hand against any of us.
It is apparent that the mere knowledge that a man was either a
camp guard or a prisoner tells us almost nothing. Human kindness
can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be
easy to condemn. The boundaries between groups overlapped and
we must not try to simplify matters by saying that these men were
angels and those were devils. Certainly, it was a considerable
achievement for a guard or foreman to be kind to the prisoners in
spite of all the camp’s in uences, and, on the other hand, the
baseness of a prisoner who treated his own companions badly was
exceptionally contemptible. Obviously the prisoners found the lack of
character in such men especially upsetting, while they were
profoundly moved by the smallest kindness received from any of the
guards. I remember how one day a foreman secretly gave me a piece
of bread which I knew he must have saved from his breakfast ration.
It was far more than the small piece of bread which moved me to
tears at that time. It was the human “something” which this man also
gave to me—the word and look which accompanied the gift.
From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this
world, but only these two—the “race” of the decent man and the
“race” of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they
penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of
decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of “pure race”—
and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the
camp guards.
Life in a concentration camp tore open the human soul and
exposed its depths. Is it surprising that in those depths we again
found only human qualities which in their very nature were a
mixture of good and evil? The rift dividing good from evil, which
goes through all human beings, reaches into the lowest depths and
becomes apparent even on the bottom of the abyss which is laid
open by the concentration camp.
And now to the last chapter in the psychology of a concentration
camp—the psychology of the prisoner who has been released. In
describing the experiences of liberation, which naturally must be
personal, we shall pick up the threads of that part of our narrative
which told of the morning when the white ag was hoisted above the
camp gates after days of high tension. This state of inner suspense
was followed by total relaxation. But it would be quite wrong to
think that we went mad with joy. What, then, did happen?
With tired steps we prisoners dragged ourselves to the camp gates.
Timidly we looked around and glanced at each other questioningly.
Then we ventured a few steps out of camp. This time no orders were
shouted at us, nor was there any need to duck quickly to avoid a
blow or kick. Oh no! This time the guards o ered us cigarettes! We
hardly recognized them at rst; they had hurriedly changed into
civilian clothes. We walked slowly along the road leading from the
camp. Soon our legs hurt and threatened to buckle. But we limped
on; we wanted to see the camp’s surroundings for the rst time with
the eyes of free men. “Freedom”—we repeated to ourselves, and yet
we could not grasp it. We had said this word so often during all the
years we dreamed about it, that it had lost its meaning. Its reality did
not penetrate into our consciousness; we could not grasp the fact
that freedom was ours.
We came to meadows full of owers. We saw and realized that
they were there, but we had no feelings about them. The rst spark
of joy came when we saw a rooster with a tail of multicolored
feathers. But it remained only a spark; we did not yet belong to this
world.
In the evening when we all met again in our hut, one said secretly
to the other, “Tell me, were you pleased today?”
And the other replied, feeling ashamed as he did not know that we
all felt similarly, “Truthfully, no!” We had literally lost the ability to
feel pleased and had to relearn it slowly.
Psychologically, what was happening to the liberated prisoners could
be called “depersonalization.” Everything appeared unreal, unlikely,
as in a dream. We could not believe it was true. How often in the
past years had we been deceived by dreams! We dreamt that the day
of liberation had come, that we had been set free, had returned
home, greeted our friends, embraced our wives, sat down at the table
and started to tell of all the things we had gone through—even of
how we had often seen the day of liberation in our dreams. And then
— a whistle shrilled in our ears, the signal to get up, and our dreams
of freedom came to an end. And now the dream had come true. But
could we truly believe in it?
The body has fewer inhibitions than the mind. It made good use of
the new freedom from the rst moment on. It began to eat
ravenously, for hours and days, even half the night. It is amazing
what quantities one can eat. And when one of the prisoners was
invited out by a friendly farmer in the neighborhood, he ate and ate
and then drank co ee, which loosened his tongue, and he then began
to talk, often for hours. The pressure which had been on his mind for
years was released at last. Hearing him talk, one got the impression
that he had to talk, that his desire to speak was irresistible. I have
known people who have been under heavy pressure only for a short
time (for example, through a cross-examination by the Gestapo) to
have similar reactions. Many days passed, until not only the tongue
was loosened, but something within oneself as well; then feeling
suddenly broke through the strange fetters which had restrained it.
One day, a few days after the liberation, I walked through the
country past owering meadows, for miles and miles, toward the
market town near the camp. Larks rose to the sky and I could hear
their joyous song. There was no one to be seen for miles around;
there was nothing but the wide earth and sky and the larks’
jubilation and the freedom of space. I stopped, looked around, and
up to the sky—and then I went down on my knees. At that moment
there was very little I knew of myself or of the world—I had but one
sentence in mind—always the same: “I called to the Lord from my
narrow prison and He answered me in the freedom of space.”
How long I knelt there and repeated this sentence memory can no
longer recall. But I know that on that day, in that hour, my new life
started. Step for step I progressed, until I again became a human
being.
The way that led from the acute mental tension of the last days in
camp (from that war of nerves to mental peace) was certainly not
free from obstacles. It would be an error to think that a liberated
prisoner was not in need of spiritual care any more. We have to
consider that a man who has been under such enormous mental
pressure for such a long time is naturally in some danger after his
liberation, especially since the pressure was released quite suddenly.
This danger (in the sense of psychological hygiene) is the
psychological counterpart of the bends. Just as the physical health of
the caisson worker would be endangered if he left his diver’s
chamber suddenly (where he is under enormous atmospheric
pressure), so the man who has suddenly been liberated from mental
pressure can suffer damage to his moral and spiritual health.
During this psychological phase one observed that people with
natures of a more primitive kind could not escape the in uences of
the brutality which had surrounded them in camp life. Now, being
free, they thought they could use their freedom licentiously and
ruthlessly. The only thing that had changed for them was that they
were now the oppressors instead of the oppressed. They became
instigators, not objects, of willful force and injustice. They justi ed
their behavior by their own terrible experiences. This was often
revealed in apparently insigni cant events. A friend was walking
across a eld with me toward the camp when suddenly we came to a
eld of green crops. Automatically, I avoided it, but he drew his arm
through mine and dragged me through it. I stammered something
about not treading down the young crops. He became annoyed, gave
me an angry look and shouted, “You don’t say! And hasn’t enough
been taken from us? My wife and child have been gassed—not to
mention everything else—and you would forbid me to tread on a few
stalks of oats!”
Only slowly could these men be guided back to the commonplace
truth that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has
been done to them. We had to strive to lead them back to this truth,
or the consequences would have been much worse than the loss of a
few thousand stalks of oats. I can still see the prisoner who rolled up
his shirt sleeves, thrust his right hand under my nose and shouted,
“May this hand be cut o if I don’t stain it with blood on the day
when I get home!” I want to emphasize that the man who said these
words was not a bad fellow. He had been the best of comrades in
camp and afterwards.
Apart from the moral deformity resulting from the sudden release
of mental pressure, there were two other fundamental experiences
which threatened to damage the character of the liberated prisoner:
bitterness and disillusionment when he returned to his former life.
Bitterness was caused by a number of things he came up against in
his former home town. When, on his return, a man found that in
many places he was met only with a shrug of the shoulders and with
hackneyed phrases, he tended to become bitter and to ask himself
why he had gone through all that he had. When he heard the same
phrases nearly everywhere—“We did not know about it,” and “We,
too, have su ered,” then he asked himself, have they really nothing
better to say to me?
The experience of disillusionment is di erent. Here it was not
one’s fellow man (whose super ciality and lack of feeling was so
disgusting that one nally felt like creeping into a hole and neither
hearing nor seeing human beings any more) but fate itself which
seemed so cruel. A man who for years had thought he had reached
the absolute limit of all possible su ering now found that su ering
has no limits, and that he could su er still more, and still more
intensely.
When we spoke about attempts to give a man in camp mental
courage, we said that he had to be shown something to look forward
to in the future. He had to be reminded that life still waited for him,
that a human being waited for his return. But after liberation? There
were some men who found that no one awaited them. Woe to him
who found that the person whose memory alone had given him
courage in camp did not exist any more! Woe to him who, when the
day of his dreams nally came, found it so di erent from all he had
longed for! Perhaps he boarded a trolley, traveled out to the home
which he had seen for years in his mind, and only in his mind, and
pressed the bell, just as he has longed to do in thousands of dreams,
only to nd that the person who should open the door was not there,
and would never be there again.
We all said to each other in camp that there could be no earthly
happiness which could compensate for all we had su ered. We were
not hoping for happiness—it was not that which gave us courage and
gave meaning to our su ering, our sacri ces and our dying. And yet
we were not prepared for unhappiness. This disillusionment, which
awaited not a small number of prisoners, was an experience which
these men have found very hard to get over and which, for a
psychiatrist, is also very di cult to help them overcome. But this
must not be a discouragement to him; on the contrary, it should
provide an added stimulus.
But for every one of the liberated prisoners, the day comes when,
looking back on his camp experiences, he can no longer understand
how he endured it all. As the day of his liberation eventually came,
when everything seemed to him like a beautiful dream, so also the
day comes when all his camp experiences seem to him nothing but a
nightmare.
The crowning experience of all, for the homecoming man, is the
wonderful feeling that, after all he has su ered, there is nothing he
need fear any more—except his God.
1. An interesting incident with reference to this SS commander is
in regard to the attitude toward him of some of his Jewish prisoners.
At the end of the war when the American troops liberated the
prisoners from our camp, three young Hungarian Jews hid this
commander in the Bavarian woods. Then they went to the
commandant of the American Forces who was very eager to capture
this SS commander and they said they would tell him where he was
but only under certain conditions: the American commander must
promise that absolutely no harm would come to this man. After a
while, the American o cer nally promised these young Jews that
the SS commander when taken into captivity would be kept safe
from harm. Not only did the American o cer keep his promise but, as
a matter of fact, the former SS commander of this concentration
camp was in a sense restored to his command, for he supervised the
collection of clothing among the nearby Bavarian villages, and its
distribution to all of us who at that time still wore the clothes we had
inherited from other inmates of Camp Auschwitz who were not as
fortunate as we, having been sent to the gas chamber immediately
upon their arrival at the railway station.
was weak and exhausted from a serious attack of typhus. Then I
went back to my lonely place on the wood cover of the water shaft.
This shaft, incidentally, once saved the lives of three fellow
prisoners. Shortly before liberation, mass transports were organized
to go to Dachau, and these three prisoners wisely tried to avoid the
trip. They climbed down the shaft and hid there from the guards. I
calmly sat on the lid, looking innocent and playing a childish game
of throwing pebbles at the barbed wire. On spotting me, the guard
hesitated for a moment, but then passed on. Soon I could tell the
three men below that the worst danger was over.
It is very di cult for an outsider to grasp how very little value was
placed on human life in camp. The camp inmate was hardened, but
possibly became more conscious of this complete disregard of human
existence when a convoy of sick men was arranged. The emaciated
bodies of the sick were thrown on two-wheeled carts which were
drawn by prisoners for many miles, often through snowstorms, to the
next camp. If one of the sick men had died before the cart left, he
was thrown on anyway—the list had to be correct! The list was the
only thing that mattered. A man counted only because he had a
prison number. One literally became a number: dead or alive—that
was unimportant; the life of a “number” was completely irrelevant.
What stood behind that number and that life mattered even less: the
fate, the history, the name of the man. In the transport of sick
patients that I, in my capacity as a doctor, had to accompany from
one camp in Bavaria to another, there was a young prisoner whose
brother was not on the list and therefore would have to be left
behind. The young man begged so long that the camp warden
decided to work an exchange, and the brother took the place of a
man who, at the moment, preferred to stay behind. But the list had
to be correct! That was easy. The brother just exchanged numbers
with the other prisoner.
As I have mentioned before, we had no documents; everyone was
lucky to own his body, which, after all, was still breathing. All else
about us, i.e., the rags hanging from our gaunt skeletons, was only of
interest if we were assigned to a transport of sick patients. The
departing “Moslems” were examined with unabashed curiosity to see
whether their coats or shoes were not better than one’s own. After
all, their fates were sealed. But those who stayed behind in camp,
who were still capable of some work, had to make use of every
means to improve their chances of survival. They were not
sentimental. The prisoners saw themselves completely dependent on
the moods of the guards—playthings of fate—and this made them
even less human than the circumstances warranted.
In Auschwitz I had laid down a rule for myself which proved to be a
good one and which most of my comrades later followed. I generally
answered all kinds of questions truthfully. But I was silent about
anything that was not expressly asked for. If I were asked my age, I
gave it. If asked about my profession, I said “doctor,” but did not
elaborate. The rst morning in Auschwitz an SS o cer came to the
parade ground. We had to fall into separate groups of prisoners:
over forty years, under forty years, metal workers, mechanics, and so
forth. Then we were examined for ruptures and some prisoners had
to form a new group. The group that I was in was driven to another
hut, where we lined up again. After being sorted out once more and
having answered questions as to my age and profession, I was sent
to another small group. Once more we were driven to another hut
and grouped di erently. This continued for some time, and I became
quite unhappy,
nding myself among strangers who spoke
unintelligible foreign languages. Then came the last selection, and I
found myself back in the group that had been with me in the rst
hut! They had barely noticed that I had been sent from hut to hut in
the meantime. But I was aware that in those few minutes fate had
passed me in many different forms.
When the transport of sick patients for the “rest camp” was
organized, my name (that is, my number) was put on the list, since a
few doctors were needed. But no one was convinced that the
destination was really a rest camp. A few weeks previously the same
transport had been prepared. Then, too, everyone had thought that it
was destined for the gas ovens. When it was announced that anyone
who volunteered for the dreaded night shift would be taken o the
transport list, eighty-two prisoners volunteered immediately. A
quarter of an hour later the transport was canceled, but the eightytwo stayed on the list for the night shift. For the majority of them,
this meant death within the next fortnight.
Now the transport for the rest camp was arranged for the second
time. Again no one knew whether this was a ruse to obtain the last
bit of work from the sick—if only for fourteen days—or whether it
would go to the gas ovens or to a genuine rest camp. The chief
doctor, who had taken a liking to me, told me furtively one evening
at a quarter to ten, “I have made it known in the orderly room that
you can still have your name crossed o the list; you may do so up
till ten o’clock.”
I told him that this was not my way; that I had learned to let fate
take its course. “I might as well stay with my friends,” I said. There
was a look of pity in his eyes, as if he knew…. He shook my hand
silently, as though it were a farewell, not for life, but from life.
Slowly I walked back to my hut. There I found a good friend waiting
for me.
“You really want to go with them?” he asked sadly.
“Yes, I am going.”
Tears came to his eyes and I tried to comfort him. Then there was
something else to do—to make my will:
“Listen, Otto, if I don’t get back home to my wife, and if you
should see her again, then tell her that I talked of her daily, hourly.
You remember. Secondly, I have loved her more than anyone.
Thirdly, the short time I have been married to her outweighs
everything, even all we have gone through here.”
Otto, where are you now? Are you alive? What has happened to
you since our last hour together? Did you nd your wife again? And
do you remember how I made you learn my will by heart—word for
word—in spite of your childlike tears?
The next morning I departed with the transport. This time it was
not a ruse. We were not heading for the gas chambers, and we
actually did go to a rest camp. Those who had pitied me remained in
a camp where famine was to rage even more ercely than in our
new camp. They tried to save themselves, but they only sealed their
own fates. Months later, after liberation, I met a friend from the old
camp. He related to me how he, as camp policeman, had searched
for a piece of human esh that was missing from a pile of corpses.
He con scated it from a pot in which he found it cooking.
Cannibalism had broken out. I had left just in time.
Does this not bring to mind the story of Death in Teheran? A rich
and mighty Persian once walked in his garden with one of his
servants. The servant cried that he had just encountered Death, who
had threatened him. He begged his master to give him his fastest
horse so that he could make haste and ee to Teheran, which he
could reach that same evening. The master consented and the
servant galloped o on the horse. On returning to his house the
master himself met Death, and questioned him, “Why did you terrify
and threaten my servant?” “I did not threaten him; I only showed
surprise in still nding him here when I planned to meet him tonight
in Teheran,” said Death.
The camp inmate was frightened of making decisions and of taking
any sort of initiative whatsoever. This was the result of a strong
feeling that fate was one’s master, and that one must not try to
in uence it in any way, but instead let it take its own course. In
addition, there was a great apathy, which contributed in no small
part to the feelings of the prisoner. At times, lightning decisions had
to be made, decisions which spelled life or death. The prisoner would
have preferred to let fate make the choice for him. This escape from
commitment was most apparent when a prisoner had to make the
decision for or against an escape attempt. In those minutes in which
he had to make up his mind—and it was always a question of
minutes—he su ered the tortures of Hell. Should he make the
attempt to flee? Should he take the risk?
I, too, experienced this torment. As the battle-front drew nearer, I
had the opportunity to escape. A colleague of mine who had to visit
huts outside the camp in the course of his medical duties wanted to
escape and take me with him. Under the pretense of holding a
consultation about a patient whose illness required a specialist’s
advice, he smuggled me out. Outside the camp, a member of a
foreign resistance movement was to supply us with uniforms and
documents. At the last moment there were some technical di culties
and we had to return to camp once more. We used this opportunity
to provide ourselves with provisions—a few rotten potatoes—and to
look for a rucksack.
We broke into an empty hut of the women’s camp, which was
vacant, as the women had been sent to another camp. The hut was in
great disorder; it was obvious that many women had acquired
supplies and ed. There were rags, straw, rotting food, and broken
crockery. Some bowls were still in good condition and would have
been very valuable to us, but we decided not to take them. We knew
that lately, as conditions had become desperate, they had been used
not only for food, but also as washbasins and chamber pots. (There
was a strictly enforced rule against having any kind of utensil in the
hut. However, some people were forced to break this rule, especially
the typhus patients, who were much too weak to go outside even
with help.) While I acted as a screen, my friend broke into the hut
and returned shortly with a rucksack which he hid under his coat. He
had seen another one inside which I was to take. So we changed
places and I went in. As I searched in the rubbish, nding the
rucksack and even a toothbrush, I suddenly saw, among all the
things that had been left behind, the body of a woman.
I ran back to my hut to collect all my possessions: my food bowl, a
pair of torn mittens “inherited” from a dead typhus patient, and a
few scraps of paper covered with shorthand notes (on which, as I
mentioned before, I had started to reconstruct the manuscript which I
lost at Auschwitz). I made a quick last round of my patients, who
were lying huddled on the rotten planks of wood on either side of the
huts. I came to my only countryman, who was almost dying, and
whose life it had been my ambition to save in spite of his condition. I
had to keep my intention to escape to myself, but my comrade
seemed to guess that something was wrong (perhaps I showed a little
nervousness). In a tired voice he asked me, “You, too, are getting
out?” I denied it, but I found it di cult to avoid his sad look. After
my round I returned to him. Again a hopeless look greeted me and
somehow I felt it to be an accusation. The unpleasant feeling that
had gripped me as soon as I had told my friend I would escape with
him became more intense. Suddenly I decided to take fate into my
own hands for once. I ran out of the hut and told my friend that I
could not go with him. As soon as I had told him with nality that I
had made up my mind to stay with my patients, the unhappy feeling
left me. I did not know what the following days would bring, but I
had gained an inward peace that I had never experienced before. I
returned to the hut, sat down on the boards at my countryman’s feet
and tried to comfort him; then I chatted with the others, trying to
quiet them in their delirium.
Our last day in camp arrived. As the battle-front came nearer,
mass transports had taken nearly all the prisoners to other camps.
The camp authorities, the Capos and the cooks had ed. On this day
an order was given that the camp must be evacuated completely by
sunset. Even the few remaining prisoners (the sick, a few doctors,
and some “nurses”) would have to leave. At night, the camp was to
be set on re. In the afternoon the trucks which were to collect the
sick had not yet appeared. Instead the camp gates were suddenly
closed and the barbed wire closely watched, so that no one could
attempt an escape. The remaining prisoners seemed to be destined to
burn with the camp. For the second time my friend and I decided to
escape.
We had been given an order to bury three men outside the barbed
wire fence. We were the only two in camp who had strength enough
to do the job. Nearly all the others lay in the few huts which were
still in use, prostrate with fever and delirium. We now made our
plans: along with the rst body we would smuggle out my friend’s
rucksack, hiding it in the old laundry tub which served as a co n.
When we took out the second body we would also carry out my
rucksack, and on the third trip we intended to make our escape. The
rst two trips went according to plan. After we returned, I waited
while my friend tried to nd a piece of bread so that we would have
something to eat during the next few days in the woods. I waited.
Minutes passed. I became more and more impatient as he did not
return. After three years of imprisonment, I was picturing freedom
joyously, imagining how wonderful it would be to run toward the
battle-front. But we did not get that far.
The very moment when my friend came back, the camp gate was
thrown open. A splendid, aluminum-colored car, on which were
painted large red crosses, slowly rolled on to the parade ground. A
delegate from the International Red Cross in Geneva had arrived,
and the camp and its inmates were under his protection. The
delegate billeted himself in a farmhouse in the vicinity, in order to be
near the camp at all times in case of emergency. Who worried about
escape now? Boxes with medicines were unloaded from the car,
cigarettes were distributed, we were photographed and joy reigned
supreme. Now there was no need for us to risk running toward the
fighting line.
In our excitement we had forgotten the third body, so we carried it
outside and dropped it into the narrow grave we had dug for the
three corpses. The guard who accompanied us—a relatively
ino ensive man—suddenly became quite gentle. He saw that the
tables might be turned and tried to win our goodwill. He joined in
the short prayers that we o ered for the dead men before throwing
soil over them. After the tension and excitement of the past days and
hours, those last days in our race with death, the words of our prayer
asking for peace, were as fervent as any ever uttered by the human
voice.
And so the last day in camp passed in anticipation of freedom. But
we had rejoiced too early. The Red Cross delegate had assured us that
an agreement had been signed, and that the camp must not be
evacuated. But that night the SS arrived with trucks and brought an
order to clear the camp. The last remaining prisoners were to be
taken to a central camp, from which they would be sent to
Switzerland within forty-eight hours—to be exchanged for some
prisoners of war. We scarcely recognized the SS. They were so
friendly, trying to persuade us to get in the trucks without fear,
telling us that we should be grateful for our good luck. Those who
were strong enough crowded into the trucks and the seriously ill and
feeble were lifted up with di culty. My friend and I—we did not hide
our rucksacks now—stood in the last group, from which thirteen
would be chosen for the next to last truck. The chief doctor counted
out the requisite number, but he omitted the two of us. The thirteen
were loaded into the truck and we had to stay behind. Surprised,
very annoyed and disappointed, we blamed the chief doctor, who
excused himself by saying that he had been tired and distracted. He
said that he had thought we still intended to escape. Impatiently we
sat down, keeping our rucksacks on our backs, and waited with the
few remaining prisoners for the last truck. We had to wait a long
time. Finally we lay down on the mattresses of the deserted guardroom, exhausted by the excitement of the last few hours and days,
during which we had uctuated continu- ally between hope and
despair. We slept in our clothes and shoes, ready for the journey.
The noise of ri es and cannons woke us; the ashes of tracer
bullets and gun shots entered the hut. The chief doc- tor dashed in
and ordered us to take cover on the oor. One prisoner jumped on
my stomach from the bed above me and with his shoes on. That
awakened me all right! Then we grasped what was happening: the
battle-front had reached us! The shooting decreased and morning
dawned. Outside on the pole at the camp gate a white ag oated in
the wind.
Many weeks later we found out that even in those last hours fate had
toyed with us few remaining prisoners. We found out just how
uncertain human decisions are, especially in matters of life and
death. I was confronted with photographs which had been taken in a
small camp not far from ours. Our friends who had thought they
were traveling to freedom that night had been taken in the trucks to
this camp, and there they were locked in the huts and burned to
death. Their partially charred bodies were recognizable on the
photograph. I thought again of Death in Teheran.
Apart from its role as a defensive mechanism, the prisoners’ apathy
was also the result of other factors. Hunger and lack of sleep
contributed to it (as they do in normal life, also) and to the general
irritability which was another characteristic of the prisoners’ mental
state. The lack of sleep was due partly to the pestering of vermin
which infested the terribly overcrowded huts because of the general
lack of hygiene and sanitation. The fact that we had neither nicotine
nor caffeine also contributed to the state of apathy and irritability.
Besides these physical causes, there were mental ones, in the form
of certain complexes. The majority of prisoners su ered from a kind
of inferiority complex. We all had once been or had fancied ourselves
to be “somebody.” Now we were treated like complete nonentities.
(The consciousness of one’s inner value is anchored in higher, more
spiritual things, and cannot be shaken by camp life. But how many
free men, let alone prisoners, possess it?) Without consciously
thinking about it, the average prisoner felt himself utterly degraded.
This became obvious when one observed the contrasts o ered by the
singular sociological structure of the camp. The more “prominent”
prisoners, the Capos, the cooks, the store-keepers and the camp
policemen, did not, as a rule, feel degraded at all, like the majority
of prisoners, but on the contrary—promoted! Some even developed
miniature delusions of grandeur. The mental reaction of the envious
and grumbling majority toward this favored minority found
expression in several ways, sometimes in jokes. For instance, I heard
one prisoner talk to another about a Capo, saying, “Imagine! I knew
that man when he was only the president of a large bank. Isn’t it
fortunate that he has risen so far in the world?”
Whenever the degraded majority and the promoted minority came
into con ict (and there were plenty of opportunities for this, starting
with the distribution of food) the results were explosive. Therefore,
the general irritability (whose physical causes were discussed above)
became most intense when these mental tensions were added. It is
not surprising that this tension often ended in a general ght. Since
the prisoner continually witnessed scenes of beatings, the impulse
toward violence was increased. I myself felt my sts clench when
anger came over me while I was famished and tired. I was usually
very tired, since we had to stoke our stove—which we were allowed
to keep in our hut for the typhus patients—throughout the nights.
However, some of the most idyllic hours I have ever spent were in
the middle of the night when all the others were delirious or
sleeping. I could lie stretched out in front of the stove and roast a
few pilfered potatoes in a re made from stolen charcoal. But the
following day I always felt even more tired, insensitive and irritable.
While I was working as a doctor in the typhus block, I also had to
take the place of the senior block warden who was ill. Therefore, I
was responsible to the camp authority for keeping the hut clean—if
“clean” can be used to describe such a condition. The pretense at
inspection to which the hut was frequently submitted was more for
the purpose of torture than of hygiene. More food and a few drugs
would have helped, but the only concern of the inspectors was
whether a piece of straw was left in the center corridor, or whether
the dirty, ragged and verminous blankets of the patients were tucked
in neatly at their feet. As to the fate of the inmates, they were quite
unconcerned. If I reported smartly, whipping my prison cap from my
shorn head and clicking my heels, “Hut number VI/9: 52 patients,
two nursing orderlies, and one doctor,” they were satis ed. And then
they would leave. But until they arrived—often they were hours later
than announced, and sometimes did not come at all—I was forced to
keep straightening blankets, picking up bits of straw which fell from
the bunks, and shouting at the poor devils who tossed in their beds
and threatened to upset all my e orts at tidiness and cleanliness.
Apathy was particularly increased among the feverish patients, so
that they did not react at all unless they were shouted at. Even this
failed at times, and then it took tremendous self-control not to strike
them. For one’s own irritability took on enormous proportions in the
face of the other’s apathy and especially in the face of the danger
(i.e., the approaching inspection) which was caused by it.
In
attempting
this
psychological
presentation
and
a
psychopathological explanation of the typical characteristics of a
concentration camp inmate, I may give the impression that the
human being is completely and unavoidably in uenced by his
surroundings. (In this case the surroundings being the unique
structure of camp life, which forced the prisoner to conform his
conduct to a certain set pattern.) But what about human liberty? Is
there no spiritual freedom in regard to behavior and reaction to any
given surroundings? Is that theory true which would have us believe
that man is no more than a product of many conditional and
environmental factors—be they of a biological, psychological or
sociological nature? Is man but an accidental product of these? Most
important, do the prisoners’ reactions to the singular world of the
concentration camp prove that man cannot escape the in uences of
his surroundings? Does man have no choice of action in the face of
such circumstances?
We can answer these questions from experience as well as on
principle. The experiences of camp life show that man does have a
choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic
nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability
suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of
independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic
and physical stress.
We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who
walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last
piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they o er
su cient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one
thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in
any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.
And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour,
o ered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which
determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers
which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom;
which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of
circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded
into the form of the typical inmate.
Seen from this point of view, the mental reactions of the inmates
of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere
expression of certain physical and sociological conditions. Even
though conditions such as lack of sleep, insu cient food and various
mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in
certain ways, in the nal analysis it becomes clear that the sort of
person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and
not the result of camp in uences alone. Fundamentally, therefore,
any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall
become of him—mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human
dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, “There
is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my su erings.”
These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted
with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose su ering and
death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be
lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their su erings; the way
they bore their su ering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this
spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life
meaningful and purposeful.
An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to
realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment
a ords him the opportunity to obtain ful llment in experiencing
beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is
almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of
but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude
to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative
life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only
creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in
life at all, then there must be a meaning in su ering. Su ering is an
ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without su ering
and death human life cannot be complete.
The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the su ering it
entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample
opportunity—even under the most di cult circumstances—to add a
deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, digni ed and
unsel sh. Or in the bitter ght for self-preservation he may forget his
human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the
chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities
of attaining the moral values that a diffcult situation may afford him.
And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.
Do not think that these considerations are unworldly and too far
removed from real life. It is true that only a few peo- ple are capable
of reaching such high moral standards. Of the prisoners only a few
kept their full inner liberty and obtained those values which their
su ering a orded, but even one such example is su cient proof that
man’s inner strength may raise him above his outward fate. Such
men are not only in concentration camps. Everywhere man is
confronted with fate, with the chance of achieving something
through his own suffering.
Take the fate of the sick—especially those who are incurable. I
once read a letter written by a young invalid, in which he told a
friend that he had just found out he would not live for long, that
even an operation would be of no help. He wrote further that he
remembered a lm he had seen in which a man was portrayed who
waited for death in a courageous and digni ed way. The boy had
thought it a great accomplishment to meet death so well. Now—he
wrote—fate was offering him a similar chance.
Those of us who saw the lm called Resurrection—taken from a
book by Tolstoy—years ago, may have had similar thoughts. Here
were great destinies and great men. For us, at that time, there was
no great fate; there was no chance to achieve such greatness. After
the picture we went to the nearest café, and over a cup of co ee and
a sandwich we forgot the strange metaphysical thoughts which for
one moment had crossed our minds. But when we ourselves were
confronted with a great destiny and faced with the decision of
meeting it with equal spiritual greatness, by then we had forgotten
our youthful resolutions of long ago, and we failed.
Perhaps there came a day for some of us when we saw the same
lm again, or a similar one. But by then other pictures may have
simultaneously unrolled before one’s inner eye; pictures of people
who attained much more in their lives than a sentimental lm could
show. Some details of a particular man’s inner greatness may have
come to one’s mind, like the story of the young woman whose death I
witnessed in a concentration camp. It is a simple story. There is little
to ...
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