Victor Frankl was not the typical inmate.

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. 
- Victor Frankl 

 

The preface to the 1992 edition explains:

“This book has now lived to see nearly one hundred printings in English–in addition to having been published in twenty-one other languages. And the English edition alone has sold more than three million copies.

These are the dry facts, and they may well be the reason why reporters of American newspapers and particularly of American TV stations more often than not start their interviews, after listing these facts, by exclaiming: ‘Dr. Frankl, your book has become a true bestseller– how do you feel about such a success?’ Where upon I react by reporting that in the first place I do not at all see in the bestseller status of my book an achievement and accomplishment on my part but rather an expression of the misery of our time:

if hundreds of thousands of people reach out for a book whose very title promises to deal with the question of a meaning to life, it must be a question that burns under their fingernails.” 

Although  the Auschwitz crematorium has long ceased operation, evil still thrives giving relevance to Frankl’s work, and the lessons of the past...