At the Camp

At the Camp—a Young Girl’s Account

 

“I am very satisfied that fate has picked on me with such anger” she said to me. “Before I came here [to the camp] I  was a very spoiled girl  and didn’t carry on with  my spiritual duties.”  Then pointing to the window of the detention camp, she showed me a tree and said to me: "That tree is the only friend I have in this solitude.” Across the window there was a beautiful chestnut tree and in that branch there were two new buds. “Many times I talk to the tree,” she said.

I was bewildered; I didn’t know how to understand her words. Was she hallucinating?  Was she crazy? With great anxiety I asked the girl if the tree spoke back to her. She simply said: “Yes, it does” And what does the tree say?—I asked. She said, “the tree says:  "I am here, I am life, and I am eternal life”

Viktor Frankl
Psychiatrist

“Man in Search of Meaning”

Prisoner Concentration Camp Survivor

Austrian Psychiatrist, founder of Logo therapy.

LINK

Let me explain this equation [in human terms]:

D = S - M

Despair = Suffering minus Meaning

They can turn their suffering into achievements

If your suffering has a meaning then you can bear anything.

Viktor Frankl