Read by Simon Vance. Released in 2004.
This short book was originally written in 9 days by a Viennese doctor Victor Frankl, shortly after his release from a German concentration camp. It was first published in 1946 in the author's native German.
According to a survey conducted by the Book-of-the-Month Club and the Library of Congress, possibly in 1991, it belongs to a list of "the ten most influential books in the United States."
This book is part a story telling about life in concentration camps, part a foundation for logotherapy - a psychiatric technique used to help patients by finding their reason to live, the meaning of their lives, in their specific situation/point in life.
It's a very good book. I listened to it a few times and probably should return to it a few more times in the future.
When our life has no meaning to us, we are miserable, get sick more often, or in extreme cases commit suicide.
There are three things why our life may be worth living:
1. Doing something that we think is worth doing. Having a goal, a calling, a mission.
2. Loving someone.
3. Suffering, when we think it is worth it, when it has a meaning in a bigger scheme of things.
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One thing that I don't like about the book: in large part it talks about World War Two and the concentration and death camps, but it omits the word "German". When Victor talks about arriving at Auschwitz, he wonders if the train is still in Silesia or already in Poland... Poland is not a well-defined geographical and cultural area. Auschwitz at different times, belonged to Poland, Bohemia (Czechia), Austria, and Germany. Poland was re-created in 1918 after 123 years of partitions. Poland's borders, together with millions of people, were moved west in 1945 by hundreds of kilometers. Poland, in the period described in the book, did not exist as a country with land under its control.
When Victor talks about Dachau, he says "Bavarian camp". He has no qualms to say Japanese or North Korean camps, just not German.
There was no country named Nazi.
Germany invaded Poland in 1939 and annexed it. Part of it outright - to Germany proper, and part - to Greater Germany, as a temporary "General Government", until the Generalplan Ost could be implemented.
Most of the other half of pre-war Poland was annexed by the Soviet Union*, and never became Poland again. These lands are today in Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania.
* - or Soviet Russia as it was sometimes called back then - my grandfather who was a young man during the war, was using the words: Niemcy and Ruskie to refer to people who attacked and occupied Poland: Germans and Russians.
On the ground, since 1939 to 1945, Auschwitz was within Germany proper. There was no border between Berlin and Auschwitz. Poles were expelled from the immediate surroundings of the camps. Poles or Poland had no say in its location or management. Poles' role was to die there, not just Jewish Poles, but also Catholic Poles.
This matters, because the use of such language as in this book, helped shift the perception for the responsibility for one of the biggest crimes in history from Germany to Poland:
In 2024, in Germany, an Ipsos poll of 2000 people conducted for the Pilecki Institute showed:
"Asked about responsibility for the Holocaust, 57% believed that Germans and collaborators from occupied nations were responsible to a similar extent. Only one third (34%) believed it was “mainly Germans” who were responsible and 9% that it was “only Germans”."
In 2024, in Israel: a poll of about 1000 people lead by Gisela Dachs from Hebrew University in Jerusalem showed:
"Asked whether “the Polish people [are] responsible for their Jewish neighbors being destroyed in the Holocaust,” 47% of Israelis replied: “Yes, exactly like the Germans,” and another 25% said “only partly.” Only 11% of Israelis surveyed said that the Polish nation was also a victim of the Holocaust, and another 18 gave no answer."
In 2024, in Germany, an Ipsos poll of 2000 people conducted for the Pilecki Institute showed:
"Asked about responsibility for the Holocaust, 57% believed that Germans and collaborators from occupied nations were responsible to a similar extent. Only one third (34%) believed it was “mainly Germans” who were responsible and 9% that it was “only Germans”."
In 2024, in Israel: a poll of about 1000 people lead by Gisela Dachs from Hebrew University in Jerusalem showed:
"Asked whether “the Polish people [are] responsible for their Jewish neighbors being destroyed in the Holocaust,” 47% of Israelis replied: “Yes, exactly like the Germans,” and another 25% said “only partly.” Only 11% of Israelis surveyed said that the Polish nation was also a victim of the Holocaust, and another 18 gave no answer."
Germans set up their administration in occupied Poland with German as the official language. Germans introduced terror. For each killed German, ten Poles were killed in reprisal (my wife's grandfather was killed in such a way). Germans killed tens of thousands of Polish leaders. Germans issued a decree that any Pole helping a Jew will be killed with the whole family. Germans told Polish Jews to move to ghettos. Germans starved Jews. Germans told Jews to get on the trains. Germans told Jews to take showers (enter gas chambers)... and now half of Israelis think Poles (Catholic Poles) are responsible for Jews (Polish Jews) being killed "exactly as the Germans"?
No reasonable person would say that a person murdered in an NKVD prison in Lviv in 1940 was killed in Poland, or that Poland or Poles as a nation are responsible. Or for that matter if the NKVD officer was Jewish, no reasonable person would blame Jews or Israel, even partially, for the crimes of the communist Soviet Union.
Nobody uses the adjective Cuban when talking about the Guantanamo camp. It's an American camp, not Cuban.
How widespread is that particular distortion of the Holocaust? Very. Most recent example: when Trump's government started kidnaping people in the streets and sending them to a prison in El Salvador (an independent country), a prison which some compare to a death camp, because there is no legal process to leave it alive, and the conditions there are inhumane, many posts on social media, said "Auschwitz was also not in Germany", or "El Salvador is a new Poland" gathered millions of views, and were NOT taken down by moderators, including by moderators of large Mastodon servers.
Why is this important? Because lies start wars. Lies are behind blood libel pogroms. Hitler's lies about Jews is what caused the Holocaust. Lies, secrecy, and scheming are causing immense suffering of innocent people all over the world.
This is especially important for Poland, because of Israel's Samson Option policy, which could bring a nuclear attack on Poland if Israel's existence was threatened. This is not rational, but that's what lies do. I remember when someone stole the 'Arbeit Macht Frei' sign from the gate to Auschwitz and a member of Knesset (Israeli parliament) called it an act of war (by Poland). Later it turned out the sign was stolen by common criminals for some collector in Sweden. I know of only one other case when a danger to a state's survival might result in a nuclear holocaust for the world. Russia. In some candid interview, Putin said that if the Russian state was to stop existing, why should the rest of the world exist.
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