Man's Search for Meaning 9/20 pg.43-93

Summary: It was only his second night at the camp and he was thinking about his wife because it was her birthday and he couldn't be with her. Frankl explains how he taught a friend how to have a sense of humor. He explained how important it was to have some kind of humor in order to get through the days in the camps. When they got taken to Dachau they thought it was going to be a lot worse but then they realized there was no "ovens", crematoriums, gas and no chimneys. That was a relief for them all. It was better than Auschwitz because there was chimneys there. The men envied each other for the different jobs that they had, some men even considered themselves lucky.  Frankl says, "No man should judge unless he asks himself in absolute honesty whether in a similar situation he might not have done the same." When they were sick they were able to take breaks in the hut, they would all gather around for body warmth. The prisoners in the camps were really happy just to get a little piece of bread and some soup. The men in the camps were herded just like sheep. They lost their self-respect and descended to animal level. The prisoners in the camps wanted to be alone, they craved solitude. Frankl was trying to help patients but then he became weak and exhausted from a serious attack of typhus. The prisoners in the camps became nothing but a number, it didn't matter if they were dead or alive. The prisoners were separated in groups and Frankl said that he was a doctor, but he still got moved around a lot. Frankl wrote a will, and in the will he just talked about his wife and how much he loved his wife. He wanted to make sure that his wife knew that he loved her more than anything. The prisoners were so desperate that they started eating the human flesh off the dead corpse. He attempted to escape from the camp but it wasn't successful so he returned. The second time he was going to escape he decided not to because he wanted to stay and help his patients. As soon as he decided not to leave he said that he felt an inward peace that he had not felt before. The negative feeling that he felt had gone away. People then tried to escape but it was still pretty difficult to escape. Prisoners felt utterly degraded.

Comment: Reading all this makes me have manny different emotions. I can not even imagine being in this situation, I would never want to know what it feels like to be completely separated from my family. I also do not want to know what it feels like to be completely robbed from my identity. It would be very hard to see myself as just a number, I would not be able to handle being so dehumanized. I would do all that I could in order to escape from the camps. I would think day and night of ways to get out of the camp. I would also try to find a way to get others out of the camps as well.The camps are such a terrible place to be. I don't know if I would be able to turn down an opportunity if it meant potentially getting out of the camps. So for Frankl to do that was very brave in my opinion. Although Frankl was going through a lot in the camps all he was able to think about was his wife, and that to me means a lot. He had so much love toward his wife and he wanted to make sure that she knew how much he loved her. This is true love and care, he didn't even want to think about his wife suffering or having to go through the things that he went through. This was a very good part of this book. 

Holocaust Memorial- Lincoln Park

The second memorial I got a chance to visit was the Holocaust memorial at Lincoln park in San Fransisco. This memorial in my opinion had a lot more meaning just because of the statues that were laying on the ground. "We will never forget the genocidal slaughter of six million Jews, including one and a half million children in the Nazi Holocaust of 1933-1945." This is on one of the plaques that was at the memorial site. There was also a plaque with the names of some of the people that were killed during the Holocaust and that was really sad. The names sort of reminded me of the 911 memorial in New York that had everyone's name around it. This was a very beautiful memorial that I would recommend everyone go and visit. 

Pink Triangle Park and Memorial

Visiting the Pink Triangle Park and Memorial in San Francisco was a very nice experience.  The Pink Triangle Memorial was made in remembrance of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender victims of the Nazi regime(1933-1945). Although the memorial itself is pretty small it has a lot of meaning. When you walk up to the memorial there is a little trail that leads you through a triangle on the ground that is filled with little pink stones. Around the memorial there is also around 20 or so triangle shaped pillars that are pink at the top. After a little research about the Pink triangle I found out that the men in the concentration camps had to actually wear a pink triangle badge on them because of their homosexuality. In the years 1933-1945 there were between 50,000 and 63,000 men convicted for homosexuality. This is really sad that all this happened, and I think it is very important to learn about these past events.

Man's Search for Meaning Pg.41

Summary: Frankl is writing this book to show us how everyday life was for him and others in the concentration camps. He originally wanted to just write the book anonymously just using his prisoner number but that would make the book lose half of its value. When they had arrived to the camps they were separated to two sides, the left and right side. Those who were pointed to the left would be sent to the crematorium and those who were pointed to the right were lucky enough to live another day. Frankl was fortunately sent to the right. Families were separated, and even the children were sent to the 'baths' and crematoriums. Everyone slept together on the broads, there was only two blankets shared between nine men. Some advice they were given to stay alive was to stay looking young. Stay shaved and clean, they had to shave even if it was with a piece of glass . The children worked in the snow without any shoes on, their toes had become frostbitten. Frankl explained how the dying and the dead stopped moving affecting him because after just a few weeks at the camps he was used to it. When the men died Frankl just watched a as people came and took stuff off of the dead body, shoes, clothes, etc. He started to lose emotions, he sipped his soup as he watched the dead corpse leave the room. One day as Frankl was working on the railroad he decided to take a little breath, and right when he did that the guard turned around. He explains that he wasn't beat by the guard, the guard only threw a stone at him. But this hurt Frankl even more than actually getting beat because he felt that he was being treated as less than an animal. Frankl explained to us how one night a fellow prisoner was having a terrible dream, but he decided it would be better to let him have a terrible dream than wake him up to the reality of the camps. The prisoners were just given the basic amount of food to live.

Comment : There aren't enough words to describe how I felt after reading some of this stuff. It is unbelievable to me how inhumane they were towards the prisoners. It isn't fair that they had to go through the things that they went through. I think the part that affected me the most was reading about the children and the way they were treated. If I were ever put in this position I don't know what I would do. I can not even think about my family being taken away from me. My family is the most important thing to me and if that was taken away from me I don't think I would be able to continue living on with my life. In Frankl's situation it is very hard to decide what the wrong and right thing is to do. Everyone is trying to live to see the next day and maybe the only way to do that was by taking things away from the dead corpse. If that was the only way I could stay alive I can't say that I wouldn't do the same thing. It is very sad to think about but all of the prisoners were put in a very hard situation. My favorite part of this section in the book had to be at the end when the prisoners were looking up at the sunset. A prisoner said, "How beautiful the world could be." This is very true even today in our world. There are a lot of things going on that should be changed.