Quotes About Survival

There was neither time nor desire to consider moral or ethical issues. Every man was controlled by one thought only: to keep himself alive for the family waiting for him at home, and to save his friends. With no hesitation, therefore, he would arrange for another prisoner, another "number," to take his place in the transport.

Nietzsche, "He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How.

The past few years have certainly disenchanted us, but they have also shown us that what is human is still valid; they have taught us that it is all a question of the individual human being. After all, in the end, what was left was the human being! Because it was the human being that survived amidst all the filth ofthe recent past.

He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how," could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic

I asked the poor creatures who listened to me attentively in the darkness of the hut to face up to the seriousness of our position.

Viktor E. Frankl

As we said before, any attempt to restore a man's inner strength in the camp had first to succeed in showing him some future goal.

Viktor E. Frankl

Even if things only take such a good turn in one of a thousand cases, my explanation continues, who can guarantee that in your case it will not happen one day, sooner or later? But in the first place, you have to live to see the day on which it may happen, so you have to survive in order to see that day dawn, and from now on the responsibility for survival does not leave you.

Was Du erlebst, kann keine Macht der Welt Dir rauben." (What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.) Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had, and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being.

I think it was Lessing who said, There are things which must cause you to lose your reason or you have none to lose. An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour.

Disgust, horror and pity are emotions that our spectator could not really feel anymore. The sufferers, the dying and the dead, became such common place sights to him after a few weeks of camp life that they could not move him anymore.

There was another group of prisoners who got liquor supplied in almost unlimited quantities by the SS: these were the men who were employed in the gas chambers and crematoriums, and who knew very well that one day they would be relieved by a new shift of men, and that they would have to leave their enforced role of executioner and become victims themselves.

As a professor in two fields, neurology and psychiatry, I am fully aware of the extent to which man is subject to biological, psychological and sociological conditions. But in addition to being a professor in two fields I am a survivor of four camps —concentration camps, that is—and as such I also bear witness to the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable."17

Las reacciones descritas de la primera fase quedaban atrás a los pocos días, en el escaso tiempo que necesitaba un prisionero para entrar en la segunda fase: la de la apatía generalizada que lo llevaba a una especie de muerte emocional.

the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect.

de Nietzsche: «Quien tiene un porqué para vivir puede soportar casi cualquier cómo». Yo veo en esas palabras un motor válido para la psicoterapia. Los campos de concentración nazis dan fe de que los prisioneros más aptos para la supervivencia fueron los que se sabían esperados

verja del campo y un flamante camión, de color aluminio

A pesar del primitivismo físico y mental imperantes a la fuerza, en la vida del campo de concentración aún era posible desarrollar una profunda vida espiritual.

One literally became a number: dead or alive—that was unimportant; the life of a "number" was completely irrelevant. What stood behind that number and that life mattered even less; the date, the history, the name of the man.

If someone now asked of us the truth of Dostoevski's statement that flatly defines man as a being who can get used to anything, we would reply, Yes, a man can get used to anything, but do not ask us how.

La supervivencia absorbía la personalidad hasta provocar un torbellino mental que ponía en duda la jerarquía de valores que había sostenido al prisionero antes del internamiento.

Nietzsche's words, "He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how," could be the guiding motto for all psychotherapeutic and psychohygienic efforts regarding prisoners

We have come to know Man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips. HAROLD S. KUSHNER