The Valued Life of Viktor E. Frankl and Fredrick Douglass
...watches and jewelry. There were still naïve prisoners among us who asked, to the amusement of the more seasoned ones who were there as helpers, if they could not keep a wedding ring, a medal or a good-luck piece. No one could yet grasp the fact that everything would be taken away. I tried to take one of the old prisoners into my confidence. Approaching him furtively, I pointed to the roll of paper in the inner pocket of my coat and said, “Look, this is the manuscript of a scientific book. I know what you will say; that I should be grateful to escape with my life, that that should be all I can expect of fate. But I cannot help myself. I must keep this manuscript at all costs; it contains my life’s work. Do you under stand that?” Yet he was beginning to understand. A grin spread slowly over his face, first piteous, then more amused, mocking, insulting, until he bellowed one word at me in answer to my question, a word that was ever present in the vocabulary of the camp inmates: “Shit!” At that moment I saw the plain truth and did what marked the culminating point of the first phase of my psychological reaction: I struck out my whole former life.” This passage shows all the emotion that he had to go through. All Frankl new and loved was placed on the blanket only to be taken away and never seen again. Frankl’s knew his life had been taken away and he was now being transformed into a less than human slave to the Nazi party. But could they strip everything away? Frankl realized the Nazi’s were taking his tangible possessions like his work, his clothes and even his hair. Still, they couldn’t take his inner strength, will to survive and heart to learn more about the mind and soul away from him. These intangible values were the engine which worked so hard to keep Frankl alive as he suffered through four concentration camps. Frankl and many other prisoners lived a life that would not be forgotten. As Frankl spent time in the camps, he found ways to find meaning to his existence. More importantly, he helped others around him also embark on their quest to find their new life. Humor, hopes, and dreams were all used to help the inmates find their inner strength to survive. Frankl said that humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation. Like finding small speaks of gold while mucking through a manure pit, Frankl and others found ways to find joy in their life at Auschwitz. Frankl’s enduring perseverance portrayed in his book was more than extraordinary. Instead of feeling bad for himself, he rose to the occasion and started one of society’s most influential psychological studies. It is truly amazing how he beat the odds and found ways to conquer his foe. When Frankl’s liberation arrived he took the opportunity to make something of his experience. His life work was discovered at the concentration camps and the discoveries that were made by Frankl were astounding. He has been even compared to Sigmund Freud. Using the knowledge gained, Frankl wrote many books on the conclusions he made at the camps. Frank truly took the impossible and made it possible. Here we witnessed an amazing story of one’s life, which was transformed by being tossed from each end of the spectrum. There was even another man who went through the same sufferings as Frankl, but his story was one of a kind. Fredrick Douglass also felt this terrible sensation of living a life without significance. Still, in the final analysis, his experience was truly unique. Douglass, a mulatto slave who labored on the southern plantations, was born into bondage which gave him no chance to understand what it meant to be a free man. He grew up with his grandmother as his guidance because his mother was forced to work the field as a slave. Although Douglass didn’t work much as a child, he was still exposed to the brutalities of the plantation. Beatings took place as if they were daily rituals for masters and overseers. Even with Douglass at such a young age, he recognized that this way of life was not meant for any human. He often awoke to the screams of his aunt being beat by his master. His account reads: I have had two masters. He always went armed with a cowskin and heavy cudgel. He would at times seem to take a great pleasure in whipping a slave. I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back till she was literally covered with blood. No word, no tears, no prayers, from his gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. The louder she screamed, the harder he whipped: and where the blood ran fastest, there he whipped longest. He would whip her to make her scream, and whip her to make her hush; and not until overcome by fatigue, would he cease to swing the bloodclotted cowskin. I remember the first ...