Frankl and Elie Wiesel are two amazing survivors of the Holocaust. Each tells his own story that seem remarkably the same, but are yet different due to the dissimilar events the two experience and the actions that each one took to survive. Most Holocaust survivors would actually care not to share their experiences or talk about anything related to the events that they endured. Some, I believe, share what happened, in many different ways because it is a way for them to help themselves deal with what occurred during those years of dread and torment, but also to show the world that they survived because they had the will to live.
Dr. Frankl was born on March 26, 1905 in Vienna, Austria. He was a husband, a son, a brother, and a psychiatrist. Frankl had lived a life as a free man in Austria working at his practice. It was not till one day in September of 1942 that his life and those around him would change. "His new bride, his mother, father, brother, and sister, were arrested in Vienna and taken to a concentration camp in Bohemia. It was events that occurred there and at three other camps that led the young doctor-prisoner 119,104-to realize the significance of meaningfulness in life" (Boeree Viktor Frankl). From that day, he learned to survive.
The first event that Frankl had to learn to survive in was the train ride to the camps. "Fifteen hundred persons had been traveling by train for several days and nights: there were eighty people in each coach. All had to lie on top of their luggage, the few remnants of their personal possessions" (Frankl 12). To be put in a coach with this many people and their belongings caused much discomfort. While traveling in the train, standing no less, with the utmost discomfort, someone yelled out, "There is a sign, Auschwitz!" (Frankl 12). According to Frankl, "Everyone's heart missed a beat at that moment. Auschwitz-the very name stood for all that was horrible; gas chambers, crematoriums, massacres" (Frankl 12-13).
