Analysis Of Man's Search For Meaning By Viktor E. Frankl

One by one, as the Auschwitz prisoners inched forward in line, a Nazi guard vandalized their left forearms with an assigned serial number. Now branded, the prisoners were forced to face the fact that their very last personal possession, their own name, had been stolen, leaving them with absolutely nothing. This number had the power to strip away their previous identity and reduce the prisoners down to mere objects beneath Nazi control. In essence, the number tattooed upon the skin of Jewish prisoners in Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl symbolizes the prisoners’ ultimate depersonalization and complete loss of self. Throughout the novel, Frankl utilizes the tattooed number as a symbol of the confiscation of the prisoners’ identities

Due to the extremely high death rate among prisoners, camp authorities facilitated an efficient identification process, which is how the dehumanizing tattoo system was first introduced. Leonard Hoenig revealed, “over 400,000 inmates were registered at Auschwitz-Birkaneu during [World War II], and a vast majority of these prisoners were tattooed,” and became victims of the, “…elaborate, systematic campaign of the Nazis to annihilate the Jewish people of Europe” (1167). This number became the prisoners’ new identites, forcing the deprivation of the joys and memories that had once filled their life. In addition, Frankl explained that the Nazi guards, “never asked for [a prisoner’s name],” because, “each of them was nothing but a number” (5). Therefore, once the coded number was tattooed and sewn on a prisoner’s clothes, their past identity ceased to exist. The mark of shame pierced into the flesh of the Jewish prisoners exemplified the beginning of the dire depersonalization they would soon suffer. The tattoo would serve as a permanent reminder of the old self they were forced to leave

Frankl explains that, “a man only counted [on the list] because he had a prison number,” causing, “[one to literally become] a number: dead or alive…was unimportant…[and] what stood behind that number and that life mattered even less” (53). On behalf of the guards inhumane connections to the prisoners and sole concern of transporting the correct number of individuals, the fate, life, and history behind a prisoner was once again completely disregarded. As a result, the symbolism of the prisoners’ tattooed number corresponds with the loss of their past identity once they are forced under the immoral realm of Nazi control. They are now objects of the guards’ manipulation and have no say in their lives. Hoenig exclaims that although,“[the identification number] took but a few minutes to inscribe,…its impact [would last] a lifetime” (1167). The prisoner would never be the same; the identity they once held in the life before their confinement by the Nazis was now gratingly destroyed. Moreover, the Holocaust victims’ tattoos would serve as a symbol of their complete depersonalization that would forever be engraved on their