{"id":14452,"date":"2020-03-30T20:23:51","date_gmt":"2020-03-30T20:23:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/?p=14452"},"modified":"2025-04-22T14:00:04","modified_gmt":"2025-04-22T14:00:04","slug":"viktor-frankl-75-years-after-the-liberation-of-auschwitz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/viktor-frankl-75-years-after-the-liberation-of-auschwitz","title":{"rendered":"Viktor Frankl: 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

TIMOTHY E. PYTELL<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recent United Nations General Assembly declaration that the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz – January 27 – be designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day reflects the reality that the Holocaust has become a touchstone in global memory. Given the magnitude of the \u201cunprecendented\u201d destruction, this is not surprising. However, the conflation of the Holocaust with Auschwitz also distorts our understanding. For example, although Auschwitz is the culmination of the Holocaust, by the time the gas chambers came onto line at Auschwitz in April of 1943 three quarters of the Jews killed in the Holocaust were already dead. The vast majority of the Soviet and Polish Jews were killed east of the Molotov-Ribbentrop line and often by bullets. In Timothy Snyder\u2019s words \u201cAuschwitz is the coda to the death fugue.\u201d (Snyder Bloodlands<\/em> p. 383).<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Portrait of Viktor Frankl by Dr. Franz Vesely, CC BY-SA 3.0 de<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In a similar fashion, Viktor Frankl\u2019s survival of Auschwitz continues to sustain and distort his posthumous life. His renowned Holocaust testimony, Man\u2019s Search for Meaning<\/em> remains a \u201cbestseller\u201d especially amongst those looking for a spiritually uplifting book. Recently, Straight up Films has bought the rights to make a movie based on the book. Also, this Spring, Beacon Press is translating and publishing the lecture series given by Frankl immediately after the war titled Yes to Life: In Spite of Everything<\/em>. As the title suggest, the lectures repeat Frankl\u2019s inspiring and heroic tale of surviving the Holocaust. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the years many \u201cSelf Help\u201d experts have promoted Frankl\u2019s testimony. Tony Robbins considers it a must read. Stephen Covey, the author of the widely popular the Seven Habits of Highly Successful People<\/em> suggested Frankl had more power than the Nazis, because although his Nazi captors \u201chad more liberty, more options to choose form in their environment\u201d Frankl \u201chad more freedom, more internal power to exercise his options.\u201d For Holocaust specialists that view the camps as a system of pervasive sadistic terror, this reads like fiction. Interestingly, it was Covey who initiated the responsibility foundation which aspires to fulfill Frankl\u2019s vision that a three-hundred-foot Statue of Responsibility<\/a> is needed on the U.S. West Coast to compliment the Statue of Liberty. The goal is to build the monument by 2023. In the conclusion of my book<\/a>, I wonder if it matters to the responsibility foundation leaders that Frankl embraced the ideas of will and responsibility as therapeutic tools in the mid-1930s when working under the umbrella of the Goering Institute that was promoting a Nazi form of psychotherapy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January 2020, the renowned conservative radio host Dennis Prager was interviewed for an inaugural book club by Micheal Knowles. The subject is Frankl\u2019s testimony, which Prager claims is second to the Bible as the most influential in his life. The interview reveals Prager has a deep admiration and fascination with Frankl that began with his reading of Man\u2019s Search for Meaning <\/em>in high school. Prager even identifies with Frankl, especially Frankl\u2019s claim that the survivor has nothing left to fear than his God \u2013Prager states \u201cI am that guy.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The interview makes clear the Prager admired Frankl for his testimony and survival of Auschwitz. But the interview also reveals Prager doesn\u2019t \u201cknow\u201d Frankl beyond his testimony. He never met Frankl. He also states Frankl was 24 when he wrote his testimony when \u201cmost people think he was middle aged.\u201d Frankl was born in 1905, so in 1946 he was middle age. Perhaps most importantly, Frankl was never \u201cin\u201d Auschwitz. He was held in \u201cdepot\u201d for three days outside of Auschwitz before being transferred to Dachau where he was numbered and spent five trying months. This fact stunned me when I discovered it, since any lay reader \u2013 and all of the aforementioned self-help experts \u2013 conclude he spent a great of time in Auschwitz and admire his life-embracing response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, the equation of the Holocaust with Auschwitz continues to distort our understanding of the Holocaust in general, and in the case of Frankl, actual Holocaust experience. I have no doubt Frankl\u2019s afterlife will continue to inspire millions \u2013 as well he should. As I conclude, Frankl lived a fascinating emblematic twentieth-century life. However, by reflecting on the detailed biographical back story along with a full exposition of the social and intellectual currents to Frankl\u2019s search for meaning, we deepen our comprehension of not only Frankl\u2019s tragedy but the Twentieth Century – and beyond.
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Timothy E. Pytell<\/strong> is Chair of the History department at California State University, San Bernardino and author of VIKTOR FRANKL’S SEARCH FOR MEANING<\/a><\/em>, now available in paperback. He published an abridged version of this biography, titled Viktor Frankl: Das Ende eines Mythos<\/em>, in German in 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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NEW IN PAPERBACK!<\/strong><\/em>
VIKTOR FRANKL’S SEARCH FOR MEANING<\/a>
An Emblematic 20th-Century Life<\/strong>
Timothy E. Pytell<\/em>
Vol. 23, Making Sense of History<\/a>

\u201cAs an introduction to Frankl\u2019s ideas and their relationship to broader mid-twentieth-century intellectual currents, Pytell\u2019s biography is an important contribution to the literature on Frankl and the contorted circumstances of his life.\u201d<\/em> \u2022 American Historical Review<\/strong>

\u201cPytell\u2019s perceptive study should be read by any student of the Holocaust and any student of the postwar history of humanistic psychology. Pytell judges Frankl, but does so with generosity and compassion. Frankl, too, was a victim of the Holocaust.\u201d<\/em> \u2022 Holocaust and Genocide Studies<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

VIKTOR FRANKL’S SEARCH FOR MEANING<\/em> and all other Berghahn eBooks are available for free and direct download<\/strong> until April 30, 2020 with discount code REMOTE20<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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TIMOTHY E. PYTELL The recent United Nations General Assembly declaration that the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz – January 27 – be designated International Holocaust Remembrance Day reflects the reality that the Holocaust has become a touchstone in global memory. Given the magnitude of the \u201cunprecendented\u201d destruction, this is not surprising. However, the conflation… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,122,168,220,108],"tags":[299,1802,1252,1665,285,294,1740,1760,1782,365,1066,119,594,1822,1251,1253,1746,1207],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14452"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14452"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14470,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14452\/revisions\/14470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}