Part II - Searching for the Purpose of Suffering: Despair—Accusation—Hope

Summary

THE POEMS IN THIS SECTION, like those of the previous one, were written during internment in Dachau concentration camp. Despite the attending danger, many of the poems were written down immediately, insofar as their authors had the opportunity to do so. Others were composed mentally and written down shortly after liberation. Yet the effort not to be deprived of freedom of thought, despite every degradation, is visible in all of these works, whatever shape that effort took in individual cases. Poetry composed under oppressive and dehumanizing totalitarian regimes, whatever their persuasion, is always an attempt to preserve humanity's fundamental values. These poems are individual attempts at finding a personal answer, and vary in their reaction: despair, accusation, and hope. Yet there is one thing they all have in common: the cry for human decency as the only hope for a better future.

Viktor Frankl, himself a survivor, expresses it thus:

It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful, and which offers the individual an opportunity up to his last breath to lead a meaningful life.

… But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering.

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

For us, the meaning of life embraced the wider cycles of life and death, of suffering and of dying!