It is often said that suffering is an inescapable part of the human condition. But what is suffering, if not the test that reveals whether a man has discovered meaning in his life? In the darkest depths of my own experience, I found that man is not destroyed by suffering itself but by the loss of meaning that suffering threatens. The question is not whether we will suffer but whether we will find a reason to endure it.
My time in the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau was not merely an ordeal of the body but a crucible of the spirit. Stripped of everything—possessions, dignity, even our very names—we were reduced, it seemed, to mere numbers. And yet, within this degradation, I observed something profound: those who found meaning in their suffering, even in the smallest acts—comforting a fellow prisoner, holding onto a memory of love, imagining a future beyond the barbed wire—were able to endure when others perished. It became clear to me that the last of human freedoms is the ability to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.
In the first part of this book, I recount my experiences in the concentration camps, not to dwell on horror, but to illuminate the inner mechanisms of the human soul when tested beyond measure. I saw how a man, faced with starvation, brutality, and the prospect of death, could still find solace in the image of his beloved or in a line of poetry he once read. I saw men who, even on the brink of death, chose to share their last crust of bread, proving that the human spirit is never fully broken unless it relinquishes its own will to meaning.
Many ask what kept me alive. It was not mere survival, for survival alone is not enough. What preserved me was the vision of a future—one in which I would see my wife again, one in which I would complete the work that had been taken from me, one in which I could tell others that there is meaning in even the most senseless suffering. For those who had lost all reason to live, the body soon followed.
The second part of this book outlines the principles of Logotherapy, the school of thought I developed based on these experiences. Unlike Freud, who saw man as driven by pleasure, or Adler, who saw him as driven by power, I came to believe that man is fundamentally driven by a search for meaning. When he is deprived of meaning, he falls into despair, neurosis, and existential emptiness. This is the true crisis of modernity: not that we suffer, but that we have lost the ability to see our suffering within a larger, meaningful framework.
Logotherapy is not concerned with past traumas but with future possibilities. It does not ask, “What happened to you?” but rather, “What is being asked of you?” Even in suffering, life asks something of us—whether to bear witness to truth, to create, to love, or simply to endure with dignity. Meaning is not something we invent; it is something we discover, unique to each individual and moment.
Through Logotherapy, I have treated patients who, though clinically sound, felt their lives were empty. Some sought pleasure, but it did not satisfy. Others sought status, but it did not fulfill. The only true antidote to this existential vacuum is the pursuit of meaning. Meaning is not something we can receive passively; it must be actively sought, often through work, love, or courage in the face of suffering.
In the end, Man’s Search for Meaning is not about my story alone, nor is it only about the horrors of the Holocaust. It is about the universal truth that every human being will, at some point, confront suffering. The question is not whether suffering will come, but whether we will answer it with despair or with the courage to find meaning within it.
To those who suffer, I say: Life still expects something from you. There is still a task to be completed, a love to be given, a truth to be upheld. And in that, you will find meaning. As Nietzsche wrote, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” And so, I ask you: What is your why?
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