Book Review:-Man’s search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl | Get PDF

Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl is a world-famous book. If you think your life has many problems and you don’t have any solution for them, then this book is for you. This book deals with situations that we can’t even imagine.

Victor Frankl is one of the people who deal with the situation. During the second world war, Victor Frankl was kept in a prison where thousands of innocents were killed in Concentration camps.

About the Story

This story is all about an innocent person whose daily routine during the Second World War in 1944, the writer said that all of us are sent to concentration camps and concentration firms get money for the number of people who are sent to concentration camps. And in this manner, they lived their life as a prisoner no 119. They aren’t considered humans, for them we are like numbers only.

While living in camps I noticed and observed the psychological reactions of other people. Whenever a prisoner came into camp, then the prisoner got shell shocked to see the conditions. Prisoners were taken to a garage in a very harsh condition and people were alive because they opened a small number of things so that prisoners were alive.

In every coach seat of the train there were almost 80 to 90 people kept and thousands of prisoners were taken. Prisoners thought that they were going to work for them but we were shell shocked when they stopped the train near Concentration camp where we all saw that gates were covered with wires and wires contained current and watchmen were present in huge quantities to keep an eye on us.

Prisoners were standing in a long queue. The gates were opened for us and police officers went in the train and took all of us with them. When we reached, we all prayed for our well-being and then an order came that the stuff people took with them had to be left in the train and after that we all stood up as males and females in different queues. When the people were being checked, there was another officer present who gave orders to go on left or on right and suddenly a person said to me that those who went to the right will do work and those who went on left are ill or useless.

Finally, my turn came and I pretended to be courageous and fit and the officer gave me the direction to go to the right. On that very day, 90% of people’s life decisions were taken over there. When I reached the right then realized that the people who went to the left meant they were going to die.

In Kabristan, there were gas towers and people were supposed to bathe and in gas towers there was a big coal present and all the people who went on left were burnt alive and this was the method in Concentration camps. In this camp human life has no value and the people who went to the right ran all over the camp including the road which was covered with current.

The watchmen took all of our things, watches, rings and clothes too. The people who wore belts were beaten very harshly and they just left us with our shoes. And they took all of us to the room and in the room they removed all the hairs from our body and took all of us to bathe and were standing outside. On that day I slept in an eight feet room with eight other prisoners and all of us stuck with each other as they gave only two blankets.

People said that they can’t sleep with this or that thing and we tried our best to get sleep on that day.For some hours they wanted to be free from that pain and other mornings they didn’t even brush and they started their day and gave us torn clothes and bathing was very rare. We got injured and our hands got swollen but no medicines and ointment were provided. Only thought that came to our mind was suicide.

There was a doctor who ran and lived with us and he said that if you want to be alive then pretend you’re fit and active otherwise you’ll get an unexpected death and that death would be worse in the same manner people who went to the left. We remember our loved ones every single day and this keeps going on and we get habituated to this and think that poor people wore better clothes than us.

We got one 8 feet which was in very bad condition and all of us had to do our chores in that room only like eating,sleeping and even pooping and our room smelled very bad. The new prisoners came and their work was to clean every room and if someone refused then the leftovers were put on their face and if someone made a mistake accidentally, then guards beat them in a harsh manner.

A 12 year old girl got punished for standing in ice with bare feet and she suffered from gangrene. We all saw people with pain and saw death in front of us daily  and we got habituated. Once they kept me with people suffering from typhus and their conditions were so bad and everyone had high fever and many died in front of me because of shiverness. A person who I was talking with died 2 hours after and other people took their clothes, food and started jumping on his dead body.

One day I was working in railway track and a storm occurred and for a couple of minutes I bow down and guard saw and don’t know what he was thinking at that time and he hit me with a stone and I thought that I was like an animal and they hit me twice with stone because the person next to me was not walking proper.

We got ill and our body got swollen because of workload and we won’t be able to bend our knees too. If someone’s leg slips in snow, then guards beat all of us with a rifle end and we all bear all this because we want to live. On nights we always pray to god that today you passed our day but tomorrow what? Our only motive is to stay alive and feed our stomachs. Escaping from guards and talking with each other and saying that if we will stay alive and if we leave this place then we will meet and have good food together.

If we get freedom we want to stay with family. There was a shortage of food and because of shortage of food people are dying. In morning three whistles made and we get up with our swollen body and with wet toes try to put on legs in shoes and work and wait for afternoon because we got our food and this is the precious time in all day and in whole camp typhus problem is arising and I was took to other place with other people in other concentration camp through train and in the mid my home was also there where I lived once and asked everyone to give me some space so that I could saw my home but no response.

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I also started suffering from typhus and to divert my mind I started writing on a piece of paper because trust and belief can make you alive and pray to god that if he keeps us there then he will give freedom to us also. We are in a lot of pain but our soul is free like a bird. We only had memories with us to keep us alive.

One fine day, we started walking early. Are those who walked slowly getting beaten and the man who was walking in front of me said what if our wives saw us like this? And I remembered my wife looking up and for the first time I realised the value, importance and meaning of love songs, love stories, poems etc.

I was that only man who had only pain and nothing else and the only thing that gave me satisfaction is my wife’s memories that we spent together. Guards called us “pigs” and we saw nature and learned the beauty of nature. People who were suffering from serious medical issues were given half of an aspirin tablet that time and many people died and their body was rotten in front of me.

One day I planned on running from here with another man and the man’s friend was waiting outside with the uniform and with food and when we ran I took a round of camp and an ill man asked me if I was going and this left me in camp only.

Thank god I didn’t run because after a few days battlefront reached us and after watching the battlefront all the guards left.

Battlefront gave freedom to all of us and gave us medicines, treatment and food. They even burnt the Concentration camp and next morning there was no noise and I realized that yesterday was his last day in this camp. The writer didn’t write this book to get fame but wrote it because he wants to tell World that no matter how tough the situations arise, people get solutions and live in those situations also.

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