Meaning And Survival Poem by Paul Hartal

Viktor Frankl spent three years as
a prisoner in Nazi camps, including
Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and Dachau.

The famous psychiatrist
and founder of Logotherapy says
that the essential lesson he learned
from his ordeal centers on the search
for meaning:

For only those prisoners
who believed that their life was worth
living enhanced the odds for survival.

Thus outliving the horrors
of the Holocaust
involved both physical resilience
and spiritual resistance.

Therefore only inmates
who could rise above their agony,
pain and suffering,
only those who remained goal-oriented
and envisioned freedom,
and still viewed their life important,
purposeful and meaningful,
only they had a better chance
to see the day of liberation.