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Living In A Concentration Camp Analysis

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In a concentration camp, a person is stripped of all their belongings, all their clothes, hair, and even their identity. They become nothing more than a number and have no control over when, what, or how much they eat. They have no contact outside of the camp, and many are left wondering whether their own family members are dead or alive. With this situation, the Germans are restraining the physical and mental states of the prisoners. The prisoners have lost most of their mental and physical freedom. However, being a self is about more than simply surviving by meeting our physical and mental needs. This more is a third dimension of life known as spirituality. The spiritual dimension of self involves deep connections with things beyond yourself …show more content…

An example of the people who went this route is the camp’s Capos, who were like the upper class bullies of population of prisoners. Other responses included suicide, or like Frankl, searching for meaning in the camp and finding reasons to live. But what is more important than these responses, is the fact that there were more than one, which means that the prisoners had the ability to choose how to respond. If the people in the camp had to physical freedom, which was evident in the daily life of the prisoners, and no mental freedom, which shone through when the prisoners turned against themselves or committed suicide, then there had to be another kind of freedom that explained this ability to choose. This is what spiritual freedom is, the ability to choose your response to your situation. By exploring this spiritual freedom, and choosing to search for meaning is how Frankl found the third dimension of spirituality and found his purpose. Spiritual freedom allows us to find and develop our spirituality by exploring responses to get closer and closer to our purpose and then carrying out our purposes through our

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