man-s-search-for-meaning

EXPERIENCES IN A CONCENTRATION CAMP
our party had to keep on working. I worked quite hard
at mending the track with gravel, since that was the
only way to keep warm. For only one moment I
paused to get my breath and to lean on my shovel.
Unfortunately the guard turned around just then and
thought I was loafing. The pain he caused me was not
from any insults or any blows. That guard did not think
it worth his while to say anything, not even a swear
word, to the ragged, emaciated figure standing before
him, which probably reminded him only vaguely of a
human form. Instead, he playfully picked up a stone
and threw it at me. That, to me, seemed the way to
attract the attention of a beast, to call a domestic
animal back to its job, a creature with which you have
so little in common that you do not even punish it.
The most painful part of beatings is the insult which
they imply. At one time we had to carry some long,
heavy girders over icy tracks. If one man slipped, he
endangered not only himself but all the others who
carried the same girder. An old friend of mine had a
congenitally dislocated hip. He was glad to be capable
of working in spite of it, since the physically disabled
were almost certainly sent to death when a selection
took place. He limped over the track with an especially
heavy girder, and seemed about to fall and drag
the others with him. As yet, I was not carrying a girder
so I jumped to his assistance without stopping to think.
I was immediately hit on the back, rudely reprimanded
and ordered to return to my place. A few minutes
previously the same guard who struck me had told us
deprecatingly that we "pigs" lacked the spirit of comradeship.
Another time, in a forest, with the temperature at 2°
43