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"In 1941 [...] Jews were killing themselves at the rate of about 10 a day, and Frankl was determined to save them. Frankl tried to bring the suicidal patients b

"In 1941 [...] Jews were killing themselves at the rate of about 10 a day, and Frankl was determined to save them. Frankl tried to bring the suicidal patients back by injecting them with amphetamines, but it didn’t work. And so, Frankl bored holes in the skulls of his Jewish patients, who had taken overdoses of pills in the hope of escaping their Nazi tormentors, and jolted their brains with Pervitin, an amphetamine popular in the Third Reich. The suicidal patients revived, but only for 24 hours. One wonders what agonies they went through in their last day of life, with Frankl’s amphetamines coursing through their trepanned heads. [...] Frankl wrote, “When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. … His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.” The suicidal Jews had not borne their burden properly. If they lived they could still stake a claim to their suffering as a “unique opportunity,” Frankl believed. What Frankl failed to see was that Austrian Jews were making a political statement by killing themselves, sometimes at the Gestapo’s deportation office. As Frankl’s biographer Timothy Pytell points out, their “Masada tactic” was an act of protest. The Nazis in fact shared Frankl’s goal of preventing Jews from killing themselves, since they had decreed Jewish suicide to be “illegal.” Jews belonged to the Reich, to be disposed of as the Germans saw fit." https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/viktor-frankl https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/vik...

noduerme 5y ago
If you take the idea that suicide is a rational, meaningful form of protest, then like the nazis you would want to prohibit the people you're murdering from killing themselves first. The nazis were sadists who wanted the act of murder all to themselves, so they overlooked the existential aspect: The dead can't talk either way. Frankl at least wanted to keep them alive, to prove that existence did have meaning, even in the worst suffering. So? He was a humanist and they were nihilists, and you think that amounts to the same thing?
bserge 5y ago
Denying people suicide so they can kill them or torture them, holy shit those people were assholes.
- noduerme 5y ago
  Sadism. That's what nazism was/is. It's no fun on the eastern front if there's no one left to torture. Hitler allegedly said "if Jews didn't exist we would have to invent them." The quote has been disputed, but it's telling that neo-nazi websites repeat it frequently, then follow it up with, "who would want to invent Jews?" The reality is: A lot of people who suffered severe physical, sexual and psychological abuse as children in places like rural Germany, modern Russia and Plano, Texas, are pathologically incapable of stopping themselves from taking their abuse out on others. That implies their ability to justify being monstrous sadists, on top of lying and gaslighting people into believing flat-earth theory or conspiracies about stolen elections. This is the kind of generational psycho-sexual abuse that leads to people applauding policies like "keep 'em [**racist terms**] alive so we can torture them to death." Just want to say here, Frankl was trying to keep people alive to keep them alive. Inept as that may have been. There's a huge difference between that and getting your jollies by wanting to torture people... and only people who want to torture people would want to draw a similarity between those two things.
  - watwut 5y ago
    Afaik, by all I read, Hitler was completely genuine in his anti-semitism. And also, the explanation of nazism as being caused by unique levels of child abuse in rural Germany would be novel one.
  - sooheon 5y ago
    The problem is not ineptitude. He rejected their self evident wishes for a death they chose, revived them and subjected them to torture and experimentation that Mengele might approve of. I wouldn't wish the experience of having your head drilled open for cranial drug injections on my worst enemy. He's a torture porn peddler glorifying suffering instead of alleviating it, like Teresa of Calcutta.
    - noduerme 5y ago
      >> He's a torture porn peddler No. There's a vast difference between cutting someone's head open to save their life because they'll be dead otherwise, and doing it to a totally okay, healthy living person with the intention of killing them.

noduerme 5y ago

If you take the idea that suicide is a rational, meaningful form of protest, then like the nazis you would want to prohibit the people you're murdering from killing themselves first. The nazis were sadists who wanted the act of murder all to themselves, so they overlooked the existential aspect: The dead can't talk either way. Frankl at least wanted to keep them alive, to prove that existence did have meaning, even in the worst suffering. So? He was a humanist and they were nihilists, and you think that amounts to the same thing?

bserge 5y ago

Denying people suicide so they can kill them or torture them, holy shit those people were assholes.

noduerme 5y ago
Sadism. That's what nazism was/is. It's no fun on the eastern front if there's no one left to torture. Hitler allegedly said "if Jews didn't exist we would have to invent them." The quote has been disputed, but it's telling that neo-nazi websites repeat it frequently, then follow it up with, "who would want to invent Jews?" The reality is: A lot of people who suffered severe physical, sexual and psychological abuse as children in places like rural Germany, modern Russia and Plano, Texas, are pathologically incapable of stopping themselves from taking their abuse out on others. That implies their ability to justify being monstrous sadists, on top of lying and gaslighting people into believing flat-earth theory or conspiracies about stolen elections. This is the kind of generational psycho-sexual abuse that leads to people applauding policies like "keep 'em [**racist terms**] alive so we can torture them to death." Just want to say here, Frankl was trying to keep people alive to keep them alive. Inept as that may have been. There's a huge difference between that and getting your jollies by wanting to torture people... and only people who want to torture people would want to draw a similarity between those two things.
- watwut 5y ago
  Afaik, by all I read, Hitler was completely genuine in his anti-semitism. And also, the explanation of nazism as being caused by unique levels of child abuse in rural Germany would be novel one.
- sooheon 5y ago
  The problem is not ineptitude. He rejected their self evident wishes for a death they chose, revived them and subjected them to torture and experimentation that Mengele might approve of. I wouldn't wish the experience of having your head drilled open for cranial drug injections on my worst enemy. He's a torture porn peddler glorifying suffering instead of alleviating it, like Teresa of Calcutta.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    >> He's a torture porn peddler No. There's a vast difference between cutting someone's head open to save their life because they'll be dead otherwise, and doing it to a totally okay, healthy living person with the intention of killing them.