When Viktor Frankl arrived into Auschwitz concentration camp, he still had hope.

Most people did, he recalls. Everybody on the train knew what Auschwitz was, and what it meant for the passengers. Many had been to other concentration camps before.

And yet, most people genuinely believed that somehow, it might all end up being okay.

They were quickly dispelled of that belief. As soon as the train stopped, the passengers were forced into a line. An SS officer in charge would inspect them, one by one. A lazy gesture to the right meant “suitable for work.” A lazy gesture to the left meant the gas chambers. Or, the “bath.”

90% of the arrivals were sent to the left. They were poisoned and burned within hours. It was still dawn at Auschwitz.

The Question

The name of the game, Frankl and his colleagues quickly learned, was to look fit for work. That’s how you stayed alive in Auschwitz.

If a guard sees you limping or taking a break too many, they’d calmly look at the number tatooed on your arm and let you finish your work. Then, usually by the next morning, someone would quietly take you to the gas chambers.

“But one thing I beg of you: shave daily,” Frankl was told on one of his first nights by a more experienced prisoner. “If at all possible, even if you have to use a piece of glass to do it…”

See, shaving made you look younger. Your skin looked healthier and your overall impression was more youthful. Shaving, Frankl recalls in Man’s Search for Meaning, was even more important than eating.

Food was the other thing that could save your life. It’s hard to look fit for work on a lump of bread and a bowl of watery soup per day. Currying favors with superiors for an extra calorie here and there could very well be the difference between life and death.

But it wasn’t the body that gave out the quickest. It was the mind.

If the physical punishment hurt, the mental insult injured. Frankl remembers one particular time when he was digging frozen soil for a water pipe. Just as he stopped for a breath, a guard turned at him, thinking he was slacking.

He didn’t punch or yell at the prisoner. He simply threw a rock at him in silence.

The pain he caused me was not from any insults or any blows. […] Instead, he playfully picked up a stone and threw it at me. That, to me, seemed the way to attract the attention of a beast, to call a domestic animal back to its job, a creature with which you have so little in common that you do not even punish it.

As Frankl, a psychiatrist, observed other prisoners, he noticed that their minds quickly adapted to the unjustifiable brutality around them. Within weeks, most new arrivals got so desensitized to the daily realities of a concentration camp, they could “watch dead men get dragged away while eating soup.”

But even the hardest of shells could not withstand the penetrating pain of an existential insult. Nobody was immune to being treated like infected livestock. Nearly everyone, Frankl remembers, considered suicide at one point or another.

Why live, when life is nothing but humiliation and suffering?

The Answer

A self-proclaimed “inborn optimist,” Frankl quickly noticed that some of his encouraging talks had a profound effect on fellow prisoners who’d lost all hope.

He talked about family members. What would your wife think of you, if she were watching over you right now? Would she be proud? Would she want you to go on?

He talked about the future. What would you do, if the camp was liberated tomorrow? Where would you go? How would you live out the rest of your days?

He talked about the past. What are your favorite memories? Why do you cherish them? They’re your treasure. Nobody can ever take that from you.

He talked about sacrifice. He tried to frame their suffering not as some forgotten tragedy, but as foundational sacrifice for their families and future generations.

These talks, he noticed, touched the prisoners in their innermost humanity — or whatever was left of it. Many listened to him with tears in their eyes. Some decided to give life another try.

We’ll never know how many lives Viktor Frankl saved this way. But let’s just say: more than one.