Victor Frankl' Man's Search for Meaning

I have finished the first chapter with a few observations. Firstly, Frankl's subject alone presumes that life on he individual basis is worth living. The philosopher in me questions that and he makes no argument to the positive. 

In the forward by Howard S. Kushner he summarizes Frankl's trilogy of sources of meaning as work, love, and courage. Initially, I was struck by the failure to include any mention of country, nationalism, or patriotism. As I read into the first chapter, I quickly came to a realization that should have been obvious. The Jewish people of the era had no country of their own. Frankl was "taken" from his home in Austria, a country that early in Hitler's reign, capitulated to Nazizm. He certainly had no allegiance to Austria or Germany much less to Poland where he was incarcerated. There is some suspicion among Holocaust historians that Frankl's early descriptions of camp life in Auschwitz are more consistent with camp life at Dachau and Terezin. Kaufering, where Frankl spent five months, and Theresienstadt, where he lived for two years, are n ]ever mentioned in Man’s Search for Meaning, while the name Auschwitz appears repeatedly.

The third observation is due to my ridiculous conception of the Jews who underwent the genocide. My perception of them was as docile, kind, well-educated, and law-abiding. Lambs to the slaughter. Frankl quickly puts that to the lie. The Jewish people were and are not different than the rest of us. While the majority were as I erroneously presumed to be, there were those of more nefarious character, even selfish, criminal, and cruel. As well, many who under different circumstances were good men became otherwise in the camps. And the term Cabo was new to me.

The final initial observation involved Frankl's writing style. He accurately describes the horrors of concentration camps and their psychological effects yet he often sounds just plain cold:

One morning I heard someone, whom I knew to be brave and dignified, cry like a child because he finally had to go to the snowy marching grounds in his bare feet, as his shoes were too shrunken for him to wear. In those ghastly minutes, I found a little bit of comfort; a small piece of bread which I drew out of my pocket and munched with aborbed delight.

Free Will:

"everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate."

Bill--if you think you have free will consider your thoughts. How may thoughts come into your mind that you have willed into your ming and how many thoughts come into your mind unaided by any conscious will?

― from "Man's Search for Meaning"