Because of Romek: A Holocaust Survivor’s Memoir

Like My Brother’s Voice, Because of Romek chronicles the events in the life of a young Holocaust survivor, with particular details focused on the survivor’s brother who was killed. David Faber’s brother, Romek (a nickname), was tortured and murdered while David watched. Romek was a Polish soldier and a prisoner or war. He was released from Buchenwald as a POW, but had to go back to the Jewish ghetto in the city of Tarnow with his family. He participated in the Polish Underground, was caught, and tortured for information before he was murdered.

Unlike other stories of Holocaust survivors that I’ve read, more than half of Because of Romek deals with the horrific treatment of David and his family before David is shipped to a concentration camp. The senseless, brutal, and seemingly arbitrary murder of Jews in Tarnow is astonishing, as is David’s ability to live.

What the reader comes away with is just how arbitrary survival was for victims of the Holocaust. Having someone who is shot fall on top of you, her dead body providing a shield; having a gas chamber be too full for you to be pushed in; being given the job of feeding the camp’s dogs and sneaking some of the dog food in order to survive. The list is endless, and the remarkable thing is how often David’s luck turned toward life rather than death. Eventually, that luck ran out for most Holocaust victims.

Of course, luck is a relative term here. All of David’s family is killed except a sister who was in England at the time. Most of the time, David wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to have died as well. In reading Because of Romek, I was again questioning how so many people could become so sadistic all at once. It’s very difficult to understand that there were innumerable Germans who were poking out eyes, burning people alive, gassing them, starving them, having dogs tear them apart, beating them with rubber hoses, hanging them up as examples, gunning them down in droves. How do so many people go completely insane at one time?

A while back I bought a book for the library entitled Hitler’s Willing Executioners, about the German people. I’ve added it to my reading list in the hope of understanding the answer to my question.

Matthew Shepard was beaten, tied to a split rail fence and brutally murdered in Laramie, Wyoming in October 1998. His death became the focal point for gay rights and federal hate crime legislation. Written by Matthew Shepard’s mom, the story evokes the real Matt.—“Matt’s murder wasn’t horrific because it ended an angelic life but because it ended a very human life riddled with all the complexities and contradictions each of us face.” Judy Shepard also discusses her own journey to becoming a gay rights activist.

Since The Meaning of Matthew really is a story about a guy who was quite human, I think you’ll be able to relate to it better than the original news stories that made him out to be a saint, or the later stories that demonized him. As in my last review (Columbine) this is an argument for taking a longer look at a historically important event.

When Matthew Shepard was gruesomely beaten in Laramie, his parents were in Saudi Arabia as his father worked for an oil company there. It took them awhile to get to his bedside after picking up his brother in Minnesota. When they arrived in Fort Collins, they were shocked by the media coverage of their son’s beating. Only then did they understand that Matt was not going to make it. They had so much to deal with—the death of a child is tragic in any case, but when a child is murdered, it must be incomprehensible. The attention of the media and the needs of well-wishers increased the Shepard family’s pain. It took awhile for Judy Shepard to realize why all these people were stricken, and she felt the extra burden of having to deal with their grief.

Both Matt’s parents knew that he was gay and had pretty easily accepted it. What they couldn’t accept was some of his self-destructive behavior at the end of his teens. Matt’s drinking and other problems hadn’t come from nowhere—he was the victim of a terrible sexual assault in Morocco, where he and some school mates from Switzerland were vacationing together. The attack affected his personality and his behavior. Still, his parents practiced ‘tough love’ with Matt, not allowing him excuses, and by the time he was murdered this seemed to have some positive effects.

Judy Shepard shares why her family accepted plea bargains for Matt’s murderers. Some details of the trial are tough to read, particularly because the defense tried to make its case around the ‘gay panic defense.’ In addition, the crazies from the Westboro Baptist Church (that family that goes to the funerals of military personnel killed in service to the country carrying signs such as “God Hates You,” “God Hates Fags,” etc.) was there with signs such as “Matthew in Hell.” Dennis Shepard, Matt’s father, made a lengthy address to the court after the murders’ sentencing. It alone is very much worth the read.

The murder of Matthew Shepard is a historically significant event that became the rallying point of civil rights groups across the country. This mom’s story about her son is an important read.

In a future United States, a scourge has caused pandemic infertility. Abortion is against the law, and when Hannah Payne is caught, she is imprisoned in the “Chrome Ward” where she (as well as other prisoners) are videotaped for public humiliation. After a month of public display, she is released to try to start life anew.

Melachroming is a part of punishment for criminals. They are injected with a virus that makes their skin a color related to their crime. Hannah wakes up entirely red—crimson from head to toe—because she is a murderer. She must remain so for sixteen years. Her punishment is for ten years, but because she refuses to name the abortionist or the father of the unborn baby, three years are tacked on for each. Should she try to flee once her month-long sentence in the Chrome Ward is up, she will die—‘frag out’ as they say in the book. She has another virus implanted that will start to cause mental derangement if she doesn’t go in for her regular sessions to be re-chromed.

Hannah doesn’t name the father of the baby because he is her minister. He is widely known as a holy man and does a lot of good work for the impoverished. Hannah doesn’t want to see that work stopped. If all of these direct connections to The Scarlet Letter don’t grab you, the quote from that novel at the beginning of the book is another big hint. This is a future dystopia with a Hester Prynne and Reverend Dimmsdale (here simply Reverend Dale) working out their sins over video mail.

When Hannah is released from the Chrome Ward, her mother, a very strict, upright Christian, refuses to take her in. She must go to a halfway house run by a (extremely self-righteous and voyeuristic) Christian couple. Only capable of taking so much humiliation, Hannah flees, and, being sought by anti-abortion terrorists, finds herself in the arms of a pro-choice underground group. Ironically, what they have in common with the unforgiving Christians is that they, too, are unwavering in their beliefs. They will not let anything get in the way of their mission.

Although Hannah does question her decision to have an abortion, just as she questions her strict religious upbringing, ultimately—just as with Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter—she feels more sinned against than sinning and rejects the moral certitude of those who torment her.

I would love to talk about the end of this book with someone who has also read The Scarlet Letter. When She Woke would be a great read for teens who are looking for literary readalikes. However, here’s a caveat: This novel is not for everyone; I can say with certainty that conservative Christians will object to the content and to the outcome. It’s for mature, older teens, not the middle school set. Mature topics and situations appear throughout the book.

A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly

The Gillette murder case: In 1906, Grace Brown was a worker in the Gillette Skirt Factory (New York State) and was murdered because Chester Gillette, nephew of the owner, didn’t want to marry her after impregnating her. Chester wasn’t wealthy himself, but he wanted to marry a rich girl and have a better life. So, on the pretext of taking Grace away from home to elope, he took her to the Adirondack Mountains (also New York), checked into a hotel under an assumed name, and, took her out on a lake in a canoe. After hitting her in the head with a tennis racket, he tossed her over the side and she drowned. This might have appeared to be an accident, but Grace’s desperate letters to Chester were later found and helped to convict him, although he claimed that Brown had committed suicide. He was executed by electric chair. The murder was one of the most sensational events of the period, with a lot of media coverage, and a very famous novel was written about it about 20 years later (An American Tragedy by Theodore Dresier).

Though no one is out to murder Mattie Gokey, Mattie’s story interweaves with Grace Brown’s. As the novel opens, she is working in the Glenmore Hotel where Grace and Chester (‘Carl”) had stayed. Before Grace goes out on the lake with Chester, she hands Mattie all her letters and asks Mattie to burn them. (This is a fictional aspect of the story.) Mattie can’t sneak to a fire without someone seeing her, so she is stuck with the letters, which she begins to read.

Mattie is also a girl with few options. A top student at her school and a good writer, she earns a scholarship at Barnard College in New York, but there seems to be no way to go. A year earlier, her mother died of breast cancer, and then her only brother ran away from home after a fight with their father. As the oldest girl, Mattie has to take care of the other children and help on the farm. Family farm life is terribly difficult. The work never ends, there are no holidays and no vacations. And without their mother at home, their father can’t go away for extra work and extra money. The Gokeys live on the precipice of poverty, and anything—a serious illness, a bad crop, the death of their cows—could ruin them. The family is grieving, hungry and angry.

Mattie is smitten with Royal Loomis, her neighbor. At least physically. But the reader can see that although Mattie has the hots for Royal, these two would make a terrible match. Royal will make a good farmer, but he can’t understand why Mattie bothers to read, which he regards as a waste of time. Mattie senses the disconnect, too, but can’t see her way out.

I hope students don’t pass up this book because of the era. It’s a great story about the place of women at the turn of the twentieth century and a clever defense of feminism. The scenes when Mattie learns about some of the realities of life are more honest that any YA books I’ve read about the same topics.

Mattie’s best friend, , a married teenager, has twins within a year of her wedding. She almost dies in childbirth because one of the babies is positioned feet first. Though no one ever discussed sex with the girls, afterward,  confines in Mattie that having to care for the babies as well as feed farmhands is wearing the life out her. Her house is filthy. She wishes she’d never married, and she is sick of her husband always ‘at her’ about sex because she is afraid she will get pregnant again. She nurses the twins because she’s told it will keep her from getting pregnant, but her breasts are raw, sore and cracked. She’s gaunt, depressed and exhausted. Mattie is shocked since these realities had always been hidden from her. It’s not the life she wants for herself.

One of the biggest influences in Mattie’s life is her teacher. She appears to be a very independent single woman. Yet she has a secret, and her husband is tracking her down and threatening to put in a mental hospital if she doesn’t behave within her prescribed gender role. Ands legally, he can do this, just because his wife published poetry.

Donnelly also does a good job in giving the reader a sense of class and race issues. Weaver, Mattie’s best friend, is the first free-born child in his family. He, too, is very smart, and the friends often play word games. He plans on going to college and becoming a lawyer. His chances look good, as his mother is always adding to his college fund. But his refusal to put up with names, with the ‘n word,’ keeps the reader in constant tension, knowing that drunken loggers will seek revenge on him. In fact, all of the secondary characters are interesting, three-dimensional folks. As a bonus, the writing is beautiful. The reader sees, hears, smells and tastes life in the country, and identifies with Mattie’s desire for creativity and the education that will give her the opportunity for it.

I highly recommend this one!

It’s 2044 and the world is such a rotten place for most people that they spend as much time as possible on the OASIS, a virtual universe where you can not only play video games, but go to school, and do most other things that you’d normally do in real life. It’s a sort of Second Life on steroids, populated with endless planets containing any landscape or idea a person could imagine. In fact, life on the OASIS is valued more than real life when real life stinks.

I think the publisher’s blurb gives you a good summary, so I’ll quote it below. (I don’t usually quote what publishers say because they mostly oversell the book—which isn’t a problem because that’s their job. I just don’t often agree with blurbs.)

I came to read this novel because it was recommended in professional reviews as a great adult book title for teens. (Longer, adult books with teen appeal are something I’m currently looking for.) I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Ready Player One since I’m not a gamer. So—you don’t have to be a gamer either to get into the adventures, the perils and the fantasies of Parzical. Art3mis, and Aech (‘H’). But I do want to add that if you have any love of the 1980’s—arcade games, videos games, movies—you will have a blast with all the fantastic detail of 80’s entertainment that are recreated on the OASIS as the gamers compete for a multi-billion dollar inheritance. This is the most fun I’ve had reading a book in a while.

OK—here’s the publisher’s blurb. Right now Ready Player One is only available at the city library, so I encourage you to use your Ontario City Library card and check it out!

“At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, READY PLAYER ONE is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut—part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.

“It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.

“Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.

“And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune—and remarkable power—to whoever can unlock them..

“For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday’s riddles are based in the pop culture he loved—that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday’s icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes’s oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.

“And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.

“Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt—among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life—and love—in the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape.

“A world at stake.
A quest for the ultimate prize.
Are you ready?”

The moment that Day, street rebel against the Republic, saves June, a young and brilliant soldier of the Republic, from an illegal Skiz fight, we know the two are destined to walk the same path. As they learn Republic secrets they know they will have to fight the regime, possibly with the Patriots (an organized group of dissidents), and unseat the Elector.

Legend takes place in a future Los Angeles, and is narrated alternately by Day (golden-brown ink) and June (black ink). Day is a criminal in that he fights an evil, oppressive government, one which monitors an ongoing plague, but doesn’t allow the poor multitudes to receive expensive vaccinations or cures, both of which exist. Day also scrounges on the streets to provide for his family of two brothers and a mother although his younger brother and mother believe he’s dead. His image is constantly flashed on the city’s many JumboTrons as he is one of country’s most wanted criminals.

Day’s criminal life began when, at age ten, he failed his Trial. “It’s almost always the slum-sector kids who fail. If you’re in this unlucky category, the Republic sends officials to your family’s home. They made your parents sign a contract giving the government full custody over you. They say that you’ve been sent away to the Republic’s labor camps and that your family will not see you again. Your parents have to nod and agree.”

June is from a wealthy family, but her parents are dead. It’s her brother Metias who cares for this prodigy of a girl. That is, until he, too, is killed by a rebel. After he dies, there is nothing that June wants more than revenge. And she’s the perfect person to exact that revenge. She’s the only person in the Republic to ever have gotten a perfect score of 1500 on her Trial. She’s smart, she notices detail, and she’s quite the warrior.

The publishers of Legend want you to connect it to The Hunger Games. Again, as I mentioned with Divergent, the book cover design will cause a subconscious connection with the Mockingjay pin.

Fans of dystopian fiction, particularly The Hunger Games have told me that the romance is equally as important as the fight against the dictatorships. And although I’ve only read stellar reviews of Legend, the romance between Day and June is the one part of the book I find fault with. It seems to happen because it is supposed to. Both teens easily let go of whatever issues they had with the other, especially Day. His forgiveness of June is a tough sell, and the reader should be given more of the process. These two have the hots for one another, but no sparks come off the page, as they do with Katniss and Peta or Trice and Four. Still, this is the first book in a trilogy, and we’ll have the chance to understand the couple’s affection in the next installment. Meanwhile, we get to enjoy a quick, tightly written piece of science fiction full of adventure. Based on my reading, I’m guessing we’ll see some soylent green action, but who knows? I’ll have to get my hands on book two.

This week–February 8, 9, 10, and 11–the Colony High School Theater Arts Department is producing the play The Laramie Project. After seeing this powerful production, students who want to learn more about Matthew Shepard should consider reading The Meaning of Matthew: My Son’s Murder in Laramie and a World Transformed. It’s available in our library.

“The mother of Matthew Shepard shares her story about her son’s death and the choice she made to become an international gay rights activist. Today, the name Matthew Shepard is synonymous with gay rights, but before his grisly murder in 1998, Matthew was simply her son. For the first time in book form, Judy Shepard speaks about her loss, sharing memories of Matthew, their life as a typical American family, and the pivotal event that changed everything. The book follows the Shepard family in the days after the crime, when their incapacitated son was on life support; how they learned of the response from strangers all across America who held candlelit vigils and memorial services for their child; and finally, how they struggled to navigate the legal system as Matthew’s murderers were on trial. It not only captures the historical significance and civil rights issues, but it also chronicles one ordinary woman’s struggle to cope with the unthinkable.”–From publisher description.

“Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it’s not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way. . . . But our minds move in a dozen different directions. We can’t be contained to one way of thinking. And that terrifies our leaders. It means we can’t be controlled.”

Beatrice Prior is a Divergent. And she’d better keep that a secret. Because in the future, specifically in the future Chicago of the novel, society is broken down into five factions based on the qualities of character that individuals demonstrate. The motto “Faction before blood” means that families are less important than factions. At sixteen, children attend a ceremony in which they choose the faction they will live with from then on. To choose a faction different from that of his parents means that the teen will be separated from his family for life.

Beatrice is from the Abnegation faction, the group of people who are self-sacrificing. They run the government since it is unlikely that they will make selfish grabs for power. The four other factors are: Candor (always tells the truth, no matter how rude or mean); Amity (friendship); Erudite (intelligent and bookish—love learning); and Dauntless (brave, fierce).

Living in the Abnegation faction is hard. Everyone is expected to always give up comforts for others. They are nice, they take turns, they listen to others, they don’t worry about fashion (all clothes are gray), and they don’t speak up before hearing someone else’s issues. Still, despite the lack of individualism in this, as a group, Abnegation plays nice. Not all groups do.

Like all sixteen year olds, Beatrice goes through a simulation that, based on her reaction to various situations, will indicate to which of the five factions she belongs. But her simulation results are inconclusive. She reacts to the virtual dangers as an Abnegation, a Dauntless, and an Erudite. The woman monitoring the simulation whispers that she is a Divergent. This is dangerous. She is not to tell anyone, but she should choose a faction. Unsure of what she should do, Beatrice (hence forward Tris) chooses Dauntless.

The Dauntless, traditionally brave, have the job of protecting the city. But in recent times, the leaders are more sadistic than courageous and the initiates are treated cruelly and encouraged to be brutal to one another. Only ten initiates will be accepted into the faction. Those who are cut will be factionless for the rest of their lives, impoverished nobodies, living on the street. The vicious, even gruesome, initiation process is heart-stopping. You won’t be able to stop reading through it—and it covers most of the book.

At the same time the initiates are vying for a spot in Dauntless, there is a rumor that Abnegation is misusing its power and that the Erudite want war and hope the Dauntless will cooperate. One of the young trainers of the initiates is Four, who tells Tris, “They don’t want you to act a certain way. They want you to think a certain way.” As a Divergent, her mind isn’t easy for others to control, so she’s a primary target, a girl who may be able to help Abnegation because of her many qualities.

If you’re looking for a good read after finishing The Hunger Games trilogy, this is a great choice. (I think the cover even tries for a subconscious Hunger Games feeling.) Be mindful that it’s for mature readers who aren’t sickened by the violence, which is excessive and somewhat repetitive. And, yes, the romance is there, too, a very sweet one that will have you rooting for Tris and Four. This is obviously the beginning of a trilogy. We don’t even know how the world outside of Chicago functions—whether this is something neglected by the writer as she was swept away with her descriptions of Dauntless sadism or purposeful, something we will learn as society breaks apart and moves outward. But we will certainly check out ‘book two’ because we want to find out.

Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock by David Margolick

When young and learning about desegregation in the South, for me, one photograph stood as the example of the deep southern racial divide. It portrays all the hatred of the Southern whites for the Blacks who were trying to get equal access to a good education. It is one of the most powerful images I’ve ever seen.

That image—a photograph of a white student at Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas screaming obscenities at Elizabeth Eckford—one of the Little Rock Nine who were chosen to integrate Central High—has stood as the iconic image of racism for more than fifty years.

And for many years now, whenever I see the picture posted on display for a celebration of the Civil Rights Movement, I’ve wondered: Who is that screaming white girl? How did she have that much hate at that age? Times have changed and she must be an old woman now. What does she think today?

One thing always bothered me more than anything else. What the girl did was truly awful, but she just happened to be captured at what was probably the worse moment of her life and given out to the world as a demon-child. She was fifteen. What would it be like to become the face of racism, permanently, in every textbook and display for fifty years? What would it be like to have your entire life judged on something you did at fifteen?

Finally, Elizabeth and Hazel is the book with my answer. The girl is Hazel Bryan, and her story is told along with that of Elizabeth Eckford’s. The book gives the reader background to the date of the photograph (the Brown v. The Board of Education decision three years earlier, how the Little Rock Nine were chosen, etc.)

On September 4, 1957, the first day of the school year for Little Rock Central High and its first day of court-ordered desegregation, eight of the Little Rock Nine met and went to school together as a safety measure. Elizabeth didn’t get the message (her family had no phone) and, after being barred from entering the school by the National Guard, she had to walk a gauntlet of screaming whites to go back to a bus stop and wait to go home. (While she waited, people continued to harangue her. When a white woman who was a Communist tried to shame the crowd, people accused the Little Rock Nine of being in cahoots with the Communists.) During this walk, Will Counts, a young local reporter, snapped the iconic photo.

“When it comes down to it, Count’s famous photograph of Elizabeth is really more of Hazel Bryan; it is on Hazel that the eyes land, and linger. Despite the tricky lighting, her face is perfectly exposed: the early September sun shines on her like a spotlight. It hits her from the side, painting her face in a stark chiaroscuro that makes it look more demonic still. She’s caught mid-vowel, with her mouth gapingly, ferociously open. At that instant, and in perpetuity, Hazel Bryan, always the performer, has the stage completely to herself. Others played their own small parts in the picture, but ‘the mouth,’ she later said, ‘was mine.’”

Elizabeth is also an icon of the Civil Rights Movement because of her dignity in that frightening, lonely walk. She continued at Little Rock High for the year although a group of students was always slamming her into lockers, pushing her, spitting on her. However, Hazel was not one of those students. Her parents took her out of the school after seeing her in the newspaper photo. She never attended school with Elizabeth. In fact, Elizabeth didn’t like to look at the photo, and didn’t know about Hazel.

The photograph took on a life of its own. A white farmer paid to have it republished in a newspaper with the heading, “Study This Picture and Know Shame.” Some of the kids at Central High felt the same. They were all being judged for the bad behavior of a small group of vicious students. News men were interviewing them, trying to trip them up, the ASB president thought.

Hazel married and had children very young. Also young, she began to question her upbringing and her life. She did things that would have been considered very odd at the time. In pregnancy, she took Lamaze classes. She practiced yoga and learned to belly dance. But most important, she realized how bad her behavior was on September 4, 1957.

“When she was around twenty years old, Hazel found herself lying awake, thinking about Elizabeth, and about her won legacy. She wanted to be for her sons the role model on racial tolerance she’d never has herself. To put it more brutally, she didn’t want either of them to become the bigot she had been.”

She tracked down Elizabeth so that she could apologize. Afterward, she did a lot of volunteer work with underprivileged youth. She was “disfellowshipped” from her church for her rebellious attitudes. She didn’t fit in.

Elizabeth has had a difficult life although she has met presidents and received many awards, including the Congressional Gold Medal. She appears to have suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome before it was recognized. Her mother was mentally ill as was her son, and she appears to have suffered from depression herself throughout her life.

That these two women could become friends seems too good to be true. And maybe it was because they couldn’t maintain their friendship for more than a few years. But how their lives converge is an interesting story. Elizabeth and Hazel is a very readable book, and a wonderful look at important moments in U.S. history.

And, after all these years, I can finally look at that haunting photograph and have some answers.

The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness by Simon

You are a prisoner in a concentration camp. A dying Nazi soldier asks for your forgiveness. What would you do? Withe responses by Robert Coles, The Dalai Lama, Matthew Fox, Mary Gordon, Harold S. Kushner, Dennis Prager, Dith Pran, Desmond Tutu, Harry Wu, and forty-four others.

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Viktor Frankl survived more than one concentration/death camp, including Auschwitz, during World War II. His father, mother, brother, and wife all died in the camps. He lost everything he’d owned. Frankl was also a psychiatrist. In his classic Man’s Search for Meaning, he reflects on why some people survive in the most horrific circumstances possible. He asks –and answers—how can man find life worth living?

Those of us who’ve worked with teens for awhile know that you ask yourselves this difficult question. Just because you’re young doesn’t mean that you haven’t had a crisis, a ‘dark night of the soul.’ If you do worry about life having any meaning, reading this book is a great start toward answering your questions.

The book has two parts. The first part reviews some of Frankl’s experiences in the death camps. He looks at what causes friends to give up hope and what brings moments of happiness. In every case, the individual has to make sense out of his suffering. Frankl believes that all suffering (even that which ends in death) has meaning. Man can rise above his fate by choosing to be worthy of his suffering.

The second part covers logotherapy, Frankl’s school of psychotherapy. In this second part, the reader sees how Frankl uses his experiences to help ordinary people who feel that life isn’t worth living.

Many students ask for books by or about Holocaust survivors. This is different from others because it delves into life’s purpose as much as it does into the story of Frankl’s captivity. I found myself wanting to copy down quotations to remember.

“The majority of prisoners suffered from a kind of inferiority complex. We all had once been or had fancied ourselves to be ‘somebody.’ Now we were treated like complete nonentities. (The consciousness of one’s inner value is anchored in higher, more spiritual things, and cannot be shaken by camp life. But how many free men, let alone prisoners, possess it?)”

“I remember two cases of would-be suicide, which bore a striking similarity to each other. Both men had talked of their intentions to commit suicide. Both used the typical argument—they had nothing more to expect from life. In both cases it was a question of getting them to realize that life was still expecting something from them; something in the future was expected of them.”

“From all this we learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only two—the ‘race’ of the decent man and the ‘race’ of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of ‘pure’ race.”

“What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment. To put the question in general terms would be comparable to the question posed to a chess champion: ‘Tell me, Master, what is the best move in the world?’ There simply is no such thing as the best or even a good move apart from a particular situation in a game and the particular personality of one’s opponent. The same holds true for human existence. One should not search for an abstract meaning of life. Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life to carry out a concrete assignment which demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated.”

There’s much hope for all of us in this little book. If you’re in the middle of a tough time and looking for purpose, check it out.