Recollections Quotes

“In 1946, I lectured in the French occupation zone of Austria. I spoke against collective guilt in the presence of the commanding general of the French forces. The next day a university professor came to me, himself a former SS officer, with tears in his eyes. He asked how I could find the courage to take an open stand against collective guilt. “You can’t do it,” I told him. “You would be speaking out of self-interest. But I am the former inmate number 119104, and I can do it. Therefore I must. People will listen to me, and so it is my obligation to speak against it.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Recollections: An Autobiography

“We were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. “Et lux in tenebris lucet” — and the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present, that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me.”
― Viktor Frankl, Le sens de ma vie - Autobiographie

“Tilly must have been among them.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Recollections: An Autobiography

“I was trying to tell her that, if she found herself in a situation where she could save her life only at the price of yielding sexually, she should not feel inhibited out of any consideration for me. By giving her, so to speak, an absolution in advance, I was hoping to spare myself the guilt if such an inhibition might lead to her death.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Recollections: An Autobiography

“knowledge, Tilly did volunteer and, for whatever reasons, was approved for transport.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Recollections: An Autobiography

“Under the same conditions, those who were oriented toward the future, toward a meaning that waited to be fulfilled—these persons were more likely to survive. Nardini and Lifton, two American military psychiatrists,”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Recollections: An Autobiography

“at the lectern in a large, beautiful, warm and bright hall. I was about to give a lecture to an interested audience on, “Psychotherapeutic Experiences in a Concentration Camp” (the actual title I later used at that congress41”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Recollections: An Autobiography

“Auschwitz.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Recollections: An Autobiography

“Sounding out to bless me and perhaps to say
That you forgive me that I live.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Recollections: An Autobiography

“On one of those first days back in Vienna, I looked up my friend Paul Polak and told him about the deaths of my parents, my brother, and Tilly. I remember that I burst into tears and said: “Paul, I must tell you, that when all this happens to someone, to be tested in such a way, that it must have some meaning. I have a feeling—and I don’t know how else to say it—that something waits for me. That something is expected of me, that I am destined for something.” After this I felt relieved, and no one could have understood me better than my dear old friend, Paul Polak.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Recollections: An Autobiography

“You don’t retire from a job (which may have become stale) but to an activity that is meaningful to you.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Recollections: An Autobiography