Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl

MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING
now except our bare bodies - even minus hair; all we
possessed, literally, was our naked existence. What
else remained for us as a material link with our former
lives? For me there were my glasses and my belt; the
latter I had to exchange later on for a piece of bread.
There was an extra bit of excitement in store for the
owners of trusses. In the evening the senior prisoner in
charge of our hut welcomed us with a speech in which
he gave us his word of honor that he would hang,
personally, "from that beam" - he pointed to it - any
person who had sewn money or precious stones into
his truss. Proudly he explained that as a senior inhabitant
the camp laws entitled him to do so.
Where our shoes were concerned, matters were not
so simple. Although we were supposed to keep them,
those who had fairly decent pairs had to give them up
after all and were given in exchange shoes that did not
fit. In for real trouble were those prisoners who had
followed the apparently well-meant advice (given in
the anteroom) of the senior prisoners and had shortened
their jackboots by cutting the tops off, then
smearing soap on the cut edges to hide the sabotage.
The SS men seemed to have waited for just that. All
suspected of this crime had to go into a small adjoining
room. After a time we again heard the lashings of the
strap, and the screams of tortured men. This time it
lasted for quite a while.
Thus the illusions some of us still held were destroyed
one by one, and then, quite unexpectedly,
most of us were overcome by a grim sense of humor.
We knew that we had nothing to lose except our so
ridiculously naked lives. When the showers started to
run, we all tried very hard to make fun, both about
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