Man's Search for Meaning

Smokestacks were associated with the crematoria where the bodies of the dead were burned. Thus, a smokestack always stood for death on a mass scale. Frankl explains that when he first arrived at Auschwitz he “inquired from prisoners who had been there for some time where my colleague and friend P----- had been sent. ‘Was he sent to the left side?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Then you can see him there,’ I was told. ‘Where?’ A hand pointed to the chimney a few hundred yards off, which was sending a column of flame up into the grey sky of Poland. It dissolved into a sinister cloud of smoke. ‘That’s where your friend is, floating up to Heaven,’ was the answer. But I still did not understand until the truth was explained to me in plain words” (13).

When a prisoner moved from one camp to another, the first and most important thing to look for was the presence or absence of smokestacks. Was this a place where one would be executed and burned or was it really a work camp, or even a rest camp?

Frankl experienced this directly when he was transferred from Auschwitz to Dachau, bypassing the dreaded Mauthausen death camp on the way. On discovering that there were no smokestacks, he and the other prisoners felt a “joyful surprise [which] put us all in a good

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