36 Man's Search for Meaning
Beatings occurred on the slightest provocation, sometimes
for no reason at all. For example, bread was rationed out at
our work site and we had to line up for it. Once, the man
behind me stood off a little to one side and that lack of
symmetry displeased the SS guard. I did not know what was
going on in the line behind me, nor in the mind of the SS
guard, but suddenly I received two sharp blows on my
head. Only then did I spot the guard at my side who was
using his stick. At such a moment it is not the physical
pain which hurts the most (and this applies to adults as
much as to punished children); it is the mental agony
caused by the injustice, the unreasonableness of it all.
Strangely enough, a blow which does not even find its
mark can, under certain circumstances, hurt more than one
that finds its mark. Once I was standing on a railway track
in a snowstorm. In spite of the weather our party had to
keep on working. I worked quite hard at mending the track
with gravel, since that was the only way to keep warm. For
only one moment I paused to get my breath and to lean on
my shovel. Unfortunately the guard turned around just
then and thought I was loafing. The pain he caused me was
not from any insults or any blows. That guard did not
think it worth his while to say anything, not even a swear
word, to the ragged, emaciated figure standing before him,
which probably reminded him only vaguely of a human
form. 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.
The most painful part of beatings is the insult which
they imply. At one time we had to carry some long, heavy
girders over icy tracks. If one man slipped, he endangered
not only himself but all the others who carried the same
girder. An old friend of mine had a congenitally dislocated
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 37
hip. He was glad to be capable of working in spite of it,
since the physically disabled were almost certainly sent to
death when a selection took place. He limped over the track
with an especially heavy girder, and seemed about to fall
and drag the others with him. As yet, I was not carrying a
girder so I jumped to his assistance without stopping to
think. I was immediately hit on the back, rudely repri
manded and ordered to return to my place. A few minutes
previously the same guard who struck me had told us
deprecatingly that we "pigs" lacked the spirit of comrade
ship.
Another time, in a forest, with the temperature at 2°F, we
began to dig up the topsoil, which was frozen hard, in order
to lay water pipes. By then I had grown rather weak physi
cally. Along came a foreman with chubby rosy cheeks. His
face definitely reminded me of a pig's head. I noticed that
he wore lovely warm gloves in that bitter cold. For a time
he watched me silently. I felt that trouble was brewing, for
in front of me lay the mound of earth which showed exactly
how much I had dug.
Then he began: "You pig, I have been watching you the
whole time! I'll teach you to work, yet! Wait till you dig
dirt with your teeth—you'll die like an animal! In two days
I'll finish you off! You've never done a stroke of work in
your life. What were you, swine? A businessman?"
I was past caring. But I had to take his threat of killing
me seriously, so I straightened up and looked him directly
in the eye. "I was a doctor—a specialist."
"What? A doctor? I bet you got a lot of money out of
people."
"As it happens, I did most of my work for no money at
all, in clinics for the poor." But, now, I had said too much.
He threw himself on me and knocked me down, shouting
like a madman. I can no longer remember what he shouted.
I want to show with this apparently trivial story that
38 Man's Search for Meaning
there are moments when indignation can rouse even a
seemingly hardened prisoner—indignation not about
cruelty or pain, but about the insult connected with it.
That time blood rushed to my head because I had to listen
to a man judge my life who had so little idea of it, a man (I
must confess: the following remark, which I made to my
fellow-prisoners after the scene, afforded me childish relief)
"who looked so vulgar and brutal that the nurse in the out-
patient ward in my hospital would not even have admitted
him to the waiting room."
Fortunately the Capo in my working party was obligated
to me; he had taken a liking to me because I listened to his
love stories and matrimonial troubles, which he poured out
during the long marches to our work site. I had made an
impression on him with my diagnosis of his character and
with my psychotherapeutic advice. After that he was grate
ful, and this had already been of value to me. On several
previous occasions he had reserved a place for me next to
him in one of the first five rows of our detachment, which
usually consisted of two hundred and eighty men. That
favor was important. We had to line up early in the morn
ing while it was still dark. Everybody was afraid of being
late and of having to stand in the back rows. If men were
required for an unpleasant and disliked job, the senior
Capo appeared and usually collected the men he needed
from the back rows. These men had to march away to an
other, especially dreaded kind of work under the command
of strange guards. Occasionally the senior Capo chose men
from the first five rows, just to catch those who tried to be
clever. All protests and entreaties were silenced by a few
well-aimed kicks, and the chosen victims were chased to
the meeting place with shouts and blows.
However, as long as my Capo felt the need of pouring out
his heart, this could not happen to me. I had a guaranteed
place of honor next to him. But there was another advan-
Experiences in a Concentration Camp 39
tage, too. Like nearly all the camp inmates I was suffering
from edema. My legs were so swollen and the skin on them
so tightly stretched that I could scarcely bend my knees. I
had to leave my shoes unlaced in order to make them fit my
swollen feet. There would not have been space for socks
even if I had had any. So my partly bare feet were always
wet and my shoes always full of snow. This, of course,
caused frostbite and chilblains. Every single step became
real torture. Clumps of ice formed on our shoes during our
marches over snow-covered fields. Over and again men
slipped and those following behind stumbled on top of
them. Then the column would stop for a moment, but not
for long. One of the guards soon took action and worked
over the men with the butt of his rifle to make them get up
quickly. The more to the front of the column you were, the
less often you were disturbed by having to stop and then to
make up for lost time by running on your painful feet. I
was very happy to be the personally appointed physician to
His Honor the Capo, and to march in the first row at an
even pace.
As an additional payment for my services, I could be sure
that as long as soup was being dealt out at lunchtime at our
work site, he would, when my turn came, dip the ladle right
to the bottom of the vat and fish out a few peas. This Capo,
a former army officer, even had the courage to whisper to
the foreman, whom I had quarreled with, that he knew me
to be an unusually good worker. That didn't help matters,
but he nevertheless managed to save my life (one of the
many times it was to be saved). The day after the epi
sode with the foreman he smuggled me into another work
party.
There were foremen who felt sorry for us and who did
their best to ease our situation, at least at the building site.