Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl

EXPERIENCES IN A CONCENTRATION CAMPour party had to keep on working. I worked quite hardat mending the track with gravel, since that was theonly way to keep warm. For only one moment Ipaused to get my breath and to lean on my shovel.Unfortunately the guard turned around just then andthought I was loafing. The pain he caused me was notfrom any insults or any blows. That guard did not thinkit worth his while to say anything, not even a swearword, to the ragged, emaciated figure standing beforehim, which probably reminded him only vaguely of ahuman form. Instead, he playfully picked up a stoneand threw it at me. That, to me, seemed the way toattract the attention of a beast, to call a domesticanimal back to its job, a creature with which you haveso little in common that you do not even punish it.The most painful part of beatings is the insult whichthey imply. At one time we had to carry some long,heavy girders over icy tracks. If one man slipped, heendangered not only himself but all the others whocarried the same girder. An old friend of mine had acongenitally dislocated hip. He was glad to be capableof working in spite of it, since the physically disabledwere almost certainly sent to death when a selectiontook place. He limped over the track with an especiallyheavy girder, and seemed about to fall and dragthe others with him. As yet, I was not carrying a girderso I jumped to his assistance without stopping to think.I was immediately hit on the back, rudely reprimandedand ordered to return to my place. A few minutespreviously the same guard who struck me had told usdeprecatingly that we "pigs" lacked the spirit of comradeship.Another time, in a forest, with the temperature at 2°43