Man's Search for Meaning

Victor Frankl, himself a survivor of Auschwitz (and a neurologist and psychologist): “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.”

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 offer sufficient proof th

When asked how he survived the horrors of the Holocaust, renowned Austrian psychiatrist (and my personal hero) Viktor Frankl said, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In that response lies our growth and freedom.” The experience of Frankl, who lost everything and everyone he loved in t

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.