“The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitude.”
So wrote Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust, living through the deprivation and horrors of both Auschwitz and Dachau.
Prisoner of the Nazi concentration camp
Consider the background for his writing about freedom.
His wife, parents and brother were killed by the Nazis. His captors imprisoned him with barbed wire. They assigned him his lice-infected bed. They gave him one set of striped prison clothes. They allowed him no menu options, just a crust of bread and watered-down soup.
They told him when to wake up, when to work and when to sleep. They controlled all his relationships and restricted his speech, severely punishing the slightest disrespect or opposition.
They took away every freedom a person can have … except for one. They could not force their way into his mind and take away his freedom to choose his attitude toward his circumstances and his life. That was his and his alone to control.
Source: Viktor Frankl - Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor (Dachau & Auschwitz), as quoted by Ken Sande, Relational Wisdom 360 blog, 12 Feb 2017, https://rw360.org/2017/02/12/last-human-freedom/
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