Victor E. Frankl was born in Vienna, Austria, “Frankl was educated at the University of Vienna, where he earned a medical degree in 1930. In 1942 Frankl and his family, who were Jewish, were arrested by the Nazis and imprisoned in concentration camps. Frankl’s mother, father, brother, and pregnant wife were all killed in the camps. Frankl spent the next three years at Auschwitz, Dachau, and other concentration camps. During his imprisonment, Frankl helped despairing prisoners maintain their psychological health. He also recorded, on stolen bits of paper, his theories and experiences, which he later made use of in his books. After his release, Frankl returned to Vienna and became professor of neurology and psychiatry at the University of Vienna Medical School, a position he retained for the rest of his career” (Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia 2001). He also collaborated with some of the well known psychiatrist, at an early age before the war. “At age 16 he began writing to Freud, and on one occasion sent him a short paper, which Freud regarded so highly that he passed it on to the International Journal of Psychoanalysis, where it was published three years later” (Gale Encyclopedia of

When the prisoners had to be transferred most of them knew that they were going to be sent to the gas chamber. Those who knew where they were going tried to exchange their numbers with other prisoners who didn’t have a clue of what was going to happen to them once they would get to their final destination. When the train did arrive man and woman were separated. Then the prisoners were either sent to the left or to the right. If you were sent to the left you were going to die or in other words sent to the gas chamber; if you were sent to the right you would have to work. The prisoners slept in sheds that were designed for about two hundred people but were occupied up to fifteen hundred. In this book Dr. Frankl talks about men and their daily life, because he didn’t know much of what was happening to the women since they were all separated.

At the end of the book when the prisoners were liberated Dr. Frankl explains how at first freedom almost had no meaning. The prisoners have talked about it so many times, and waited for it for so long that at firs they couldn’t believe it. Their minds went in to a state called depersonalization; everything appeared unreal like in a dream. Second, prisoners made good use of their freedom they ate and ate as much as they could for hours, even at nights. Sometimes a near by farmer would invite a prisoner, and the prisoner would eat and talk for hours with the farmer.

Man’s search for meaning is a remarkable book. In this book Dr. Frankl explains what happened to him in the concentration camp, and how he discovered logo therapy. Dr. Frankl begins by explaining the ranks of the guards and their duties. The Capos were the prisoners who acted as trustees, and had special privileges. They didn’t have any numbers like the regular prisoners. Also they were never hungry and lived a much better life in the camp than they have had in they entire life. They were much harder on the prisoners, and often they beat them more cruelly then the SS men. (The SS men were like the helpers for the Capos). The capos were chosen only from the prisoners whose character promised to make them suitable for such procedures, and if they didn’t comply with what was expected of them they wer

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