kleenexwoman | Am posting this for retrieval later--Sociology paper based on my own experiences.

My Search For Meaning in “Man’s Search For Meaning” by Viktor Frankl
By Rachel Weisserman
Sociology 201, Prof. Matthew Sheptoski

I have been interested in the Holocaust and the concentration camps for much of my life. Indeed, I could barely help learning about it, as my family is Jewish. The Hebrew school that I went to for many years put great emphasis upon learning from the mistakes of the past, and the students were given many opportunities every year to experience the horrors of the Holocaust secondhand—we went to the West Bloomfield Holocaust Museum, saw countless filmstrips depicting the concentration camp victims and their struggles, read books and articles, and attended speeches by Holocaust survivors. I had relatives who died in the concentration camps, and this knowledge made the stories and presentations very personal to me; I would imagine that each shaved head and blank gaze in each photograph was my great-aunt or a long-lost cousin that I’d never get the chance to meet, that would never show up for Passover or for Shabbat dinner. I’d marvel at how lucky I was to have escaped their fate by mere decades, how fortunate it was that my specific great-grandparents had decided to move out of Germany away from their doomed relatives. I’d reread the stories (one I remember quite fondly was a book about a modern teenage girl who somehow traveled back in time to be put in a concentration camp) and wonder what I’d do in that situation, how I would feel and think if it had been my father and brother sent off to a different camp, my grandmother sent to the showers, my aunt digging ditches in the frozen ground alongside me.
I have often given thanks that I have never had to endure such privation for such lengths of time as the prisoners in the camps did. My pain threshold is low, and my ability to withstand physical and mental discomfort or stress is nearly nil. The most physically taxing thing I have ever done is to endure a 12-hour hike through the mountains at Yosemite National Park; I did not want to walk the trail, but my mother insisted that it would be “character-building.” She has never heard of Viktor Frankl (I asked, on a recent phone call home), but it seems she was following part of his philosophy, that of finding meaning in suffering (not that this particular suffering was necessary to her; it was to me, as I couldn’t disobey my mother and stay in the cabin all day). What followed was somewhat reminiscent of the marches described in the book: a forced hike over rough terrain with bad shoes and little water. The freezing cold was replaced with sweltering heat and the edema with pebbles that found their way into my shoes and blistered my flesh. I even used many of the same strategies that the prisoners used to keep their spirits up (on a smaller scale, of course); where they dreamed of elaborate reunion feasts, I dreamed of cool Jell-O and Coke at the campground cafeteria. Where they took momentary respite in the song of a bird or the colors of the sun rising over the gas chambers, I distracted myself with the discovery of a giant, multicolored centipede and an equally diverting attempt to slip said centipede down the back of my little brother’s shirt (for which I was shamefully scolded—no fraternizing among the prisoners). Where they lost hope and resigned themselves to death or apathy, I gave up trying to quench my thirst or wipe my sweat (such futile attempts; one becomes thirsty and sweaty two minutes later), and where they hung on out of sheer curiosity to see how long they could live, I tried to see how long my throat could stick together before I could not talk, or how long a sharp pebble could stay in my shoe before I actually began to bleed (for the record, I generally managed to fish out the pebbles before I sustained any serious damage to my foot). My mother, much like the guards or Capos, was not sympathetic to my discomfort. She would traipse along the trail, 20 yards ahead of me, and yell back that I should keep up with her or be left behind for the vultures. However, my mother’s mentality in this case cannot be accurately compared to that of the guards or Capos; where they must have been conscious of the pain they were inflicting on the prisoners, and simply shut it out or became sadistic, my mother seemed to honestly not understand that I might not be enjoying the hike as much as she was, or that I wasn’t capable of keeping up with her stride. I certainly believed then that she was being sadistic (but what child doesn’t secretly harbor the idea that the restrictions and punishments set upon them by their parents, far from being for the child’s own good, stem from a desire to cause the child pain?).
Certainly, this dynamic has been in place almost all my life. I was going to compare living with my parents to being in a concentration camp, or the propaganda and gentle brainwashing of the public school system, or even, in an ironic twist, the relentless proselytizing and brutishness of some of my ex-Mossad (not exaggerating) Hebrew school teachers. However, if there is one thing this class has taught me, it is to see any relationship and power dynamic from a situational point of view and to consider multiple motivations and points of view…thus, from that position (and from a historical point of view, not to be pedantic), the comparison is not apt. The camp guards were aware of the tragic fates and privations of the inmates; they just became hardened to it over time. The Jews, Poles, Gypsies, gays, and few political dissidents in the camps were there because they were to be killed, not indoctrinated or improved. To suggest that my parents and schools actually intended their effects on me to be similar to that of the effects the camps and Nazis had on the inmates and Jews would be paranoid and overdramatic. (Of course, I could compare the political and cultural climate in present-day America towards many of the minority groups I am a part of to that of Nazi Germany towards those same groups…but that has little to do with Frankl’s book.)
The book itself moved me as few other books have over the past year. I could particularly connect with the episode in which the author related his experience with the image of his wife, and how the thought of her love sustained him. During the past year, I’ve picked up a similar habit; I’ve started reliving past conversations and holding imaginary conversations with certain of my own loved ones when I am lonely or depressed. The rest of the book is rather a blur for me; as I’ve said before, I tend to imagine myself or my relatives in the situations in Holocaust books. But that one story…that one image…so universal and simple, so touching and understandable to anyone who’s ever been separated from the one they love, no matter if they’re in the middle of a concentration camp or the utmost luxury and comfort.
But what does one do when that same loved one is the source of misery? When your lover is your Capo, when your mother is the prison guard? When you convince yourself that you are not suffering, because the suffering is inflicted upon you by the one whose image is sustaining you through it? Only then is suffering truly meaningless—but in that case, so is love.