Today we'll start our final book and unit for the year, reading Viktor Frankl's
Man's Search For Meaning and looking at philosophical questions.
We'll start with a short discussion about a difficult topic - the Holocaust. Here is a short excerpt from a book many of you have read - Elie Wiesel's
Night:
- "Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never."
Next we'll read the opening sections of Frankl's book and start to generate philosophical questions. How do we do this? Here is a list of questions we'll use today and return to throughout this unit:
What are its assumptions and premises?
What is it assuming to be true?
What conditions is it assuming to exist?
What is it suggesting about the different people involved?
What are its implications?
If this is true then what else is true? Why?
What different types or contexts exist?
When does / doesn’t it work?
What do the specific terms mean?
What are the reasons underlying the questions / answers?
For example, are there religious, cultural, or political beliefs present here?
Who else shares this belief or perspective, and why?
- Are there other people in the book who this does / doesn’t apply to? Why?
For those of you without a copy of the book today, here are the first few pages:
THIS BOOK DOES NOT CLAIM TO BE AN ACCOUNT OF facts and events but of personal experiences, experiences which millions of prisoners have suffered time and again. It is the inside story of a concentration camp, told by one of its survivors. This tale is not concerned with the great horrors, which have already been described often enough (though less often believed), but with the multitude of small torments. In other words, it will try to answer this question: How was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?
Most of the events described here did not take place in the large and famous camps, but in the small ones where most of the real extermination took place. This story is not about the suffering and death of great heroes and martyrs, nor is it about the prominent Capos - prisoners who acted as trustees, having special privileges - or well-known prisoners. Thus it is not so much concerned with the sufferings of the mighty, but with the sacrifices, the crucifixion and the deaths of the great army of unknown and unrecorded victims. It was these common prisoners, who bore no distinguishing marks on their sleeves, whom the Capos really despised. While these ordinary prisoners had little or nothing to eat, the Capos were never hungry; in fact many of the Capos fared better in the camp than they had in their entire lives. Often they were harder on the prisoners than were the guards, and beat them more cruelly than the SS men did. These Capos, of course, were chosen only from those prisoners whose characters promised to make them suitable for such procedures, and if they did not comply with what was expected of them, they were immediately demoted. They soon became much like the SS men and the camp wardens and may be judged on a similar psychological basis.
It is easy for the outsider to get the wrong conception of camp life, a conception mingled with sentiment and pity. Little does he know of the hard fight for existence which raged among the prisoners. This was an unrelenting struggle for daily bread and for life itself, for one's own sake or for that of a good friend.
Let us take the case of a transport which was officially announced to transfer a certain number of prisoners to another camp; but it was a fairly safe guess that its final destination would be the gas chambers. A selection of sick or feeble prisoners incapable of work would be sent to one of the big central camps which were fitted with gas chambers and crematoriums. The selection process was the signal for a free fight among all the prisoners, or of group against group. All that mattered was that one's own name and that of one's friend were crossed off the list of victims,though everyone knew that for each man saved an-
other victim had to be found.
A definite number of prisoners had to go with each
transport. It did not really matter which, since each of
them was nothing but a number. On their admission to
the camp (at least this was the method in Auschwitz)
all their documents had been taken from them, together with their other possessions. Each prisoner,
therefore, had had an opportunity to claim a fictitious
name or profession; and for various reasons many did
this. The authorities were interested only in the captives' numbers. These numbers were often tattooed on
their skin, and also had to be sewn to a certain spot on
the trousers, jacket, or coat. Any guard who wanted to
make a charge against a prisoner just glanced at his
number (and how we dreaded such glances!); he never
asked for his name.
To return to the convoy about to depart. There was
neither time nor desire to consider moral or ethical
issues. Every man was controlled by one thought
only: to keep himself alive for the family waiting for
him at home, and to save his friends. With no hesitation, therefore, he would arrange for another prisoner,
another "number," to take his place in the transport.
As I have already mentioned, the process of selecting Capos was a negative one; only the most brutal of
the prisoners were chosen for this job (although there
were some happy exceptions). But apart from the
selection of Capos which was undertaken by the SS,
there was a sort of self-selecting process going on the
whole time among all of the prisoners. On the average,
only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years
of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in
their fight for existence; they were prepared to use
every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force,
theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save
themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of
many lucky chances or miracles - whatever one may
choose to call them - we know: the best of us did not
return.
