“For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth – that Love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love.” – Viktor Frankl
The Jewish people faced death. Death was all around. By around 1941, 1.25 million Jewish people needed social assistance. The food restrictions were unbearable. The Jewish people were given a tiny 184 calories while the Germans were rationed 2600 a day each. 100,000 Jewish people in Warsaw were children under the age of 15. Tuberculosis, Typhus, and Dysentery were all festering in the ghetto and on top of the cramped population it was also being used as a prison for “Gypsies”.
The elders of the ghettos (the Jewish who were put in charge by the German state) had to start choosing for people to be “resettled” (killed off). Elkhanan Elkes, an elder of Kovno, chose to commit suicide rather than taking on the responsibility. Children aged eight and older were being trained to be skilled workers in order to avoid “resettlement”. In 1942 children were ripped from their mothers and taken away to be killed. The mothers who fought were taken too or shot on the spot. In the wake of all of this the population was still carrying on with daily routine.
By 1943 it was being noticed that there was little hope and that all of the Jewish people left were going to be killed off or worked until death and degraded until the very end. A resistance started. Small resistances in different camps. The young fighting population wanted revenge and had few arms but fought anyway. By 1944 the final deportation orders had begun..
The suffering of the concentration camp prisoner is unthinkable. Basic needs were not met, which left hardly any room for self reflection and mercy. The prisoners struggled to hold on to their own values in a world of physical and psychological deprivation. From a very simple psychological standpoint Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs outlines a rough draft of the particular requirements of any human being to enjoy his/her life and search for deeper meaning.
Once “resettled”, packed like sardines in train cars, to the labor camps the prisoners lived a paranoid life under threat of death every single day and were literally worked to death. The sick, the elderly, many women, the children and the infants were stripped of their material and physical resources and killed immediately after admittance. Those men who were fit enough to work were left to starvation, disease, and the impossible physical demands of the camp. It turns out that life can’t be summed up in a simple “Hierarchy of Needs” because these people in camps held on to hope and kept their spirits up. It was observed by Victor Frankl (the author of “Man’s Search for Meaning) that those who gave up hope died soon thereafter. Many people looked within themselves and used their immense suffering to locate deeper meaning in their lives. Sensory adaptation was quick and allowed prisoners to withstand beatings that we, of our time, would never have had to endure and can hardly even picture in our mind’s eye.
On the other hand the stories of these Holocaust victims show us the desperate way in which they lived and the focus on the lack of safety and food. Prisoners had two tiny rations of bread and soup daily and would dream and talk of feasts and wonderful food they would cook after liberation (a liberation that hardly any got to see). They were quickly filed down to people who lived wildly and like criminals. We have seen with experiments (such as the Stanford Prison Experiment) how quickly and chaotically prisoners can become traumatized under a corrupt and power hungry authority. The focus on physiological needs does say a great deal about how difficult it would be for us to live a fulfilling life if our foundation isn’t solid or nourished properly.
Every human life has inherent worth and it is our responsibility not to harm or torture others even when our government demands it of us. Our world needs more critical thinkers who are open enough to locate the compassion within themselves and not lose sight of their moral compass once they’ve established their own personal views, morals and values.
“Helen Bamber shares her memories of the liberation of Belsen.“
Works Cited:
Dwork, Deborah, and Jan Van Pelt, Robert. Holocaust: A History. New York: Norton, 2002. Print.
Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz. New York: Touchstone, 1996. Print.
Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. Print
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