When he arrived at Auschwitz, they removed everything. The name. The job. The future. And even the book he had dedicated years of his life to. But there was one thing that no one could take away.

In 1942, the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl was deported to Nazi concentration camps.

He wasn't an influential man. He had no protection. He had nothing to save him.

As soon as he arrived, the Nazis razed his hair, assigned him the serial number 119104 and seized him every personal object.

Among what was confiscated was also a manuscript that had sewn in the lining of the coat. It contained years of studies and represented the work that, until then, considered the most important of his life.

That manuscript was destroyed.

In a few minutes it seemed that everything he had built had disappeared.

Yet at that moment he began the path that would make his name known all over the world.

A few months before the deportation, Frankl had had an opportunity to change his fate.

He was offered the opportunity to emigrate to the United States.

He would have found security there and could have continued his career.

But there was a price.

Her parents would stay in Vienna.

While reflecting on that choice, his father showed him a small marble fragment recovered from the rubble of a synagogue destroyed by the Nazis. On that piece of stone was engraved a commandment: "Honor your father and your mother."

Frankl interpreted those words as a personal responsibility.

He decided to stay.

Shortly after he was arrested with his family.

He was deported first to Theresienstadt, then to Auschwitz and finally to some subfields of the Dachau complex.

In the fields hunger, cold, forced labor and violence were a daily reality.

But as a doctor, he began to observe something that struck him deeply.

They didn't always survive the strongest.

Many people seemed to turn off when they lost every reason to continue living.

Among the prisoners there was even a signal announcing the definitive abandonment.

Those who decided to smoke their cigarette instead of keeping it to exchange it with some food were somehow renouncing the next day.

Often, after a short time, he died.

Frankl recalled a phrase from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche:

"He who has a because to live can endure almost every as. »

From that moment on, a battle no guard could see.

The manuscript was destroyed, but he continued to rewrite it in his mind.

During the endless marches he imagined to be in a university classroom, while explaining to students what he was learning about human nature right within the concentration camps.

He always thought of his wife, without knowing if she was still alive.

That bond became a force capable of sustaining it even in the most desperate moments.

When he could, he was trying to encourage other prisoners.

He asked a simple question:

"What is waiting for you outside of here? »

A son.

A loved one.

A job to finish.

A promise to maintain.

For some, remembering to have one more purpose was enough to find the strength to face another day.

In April 1945 liberation arrived.

Frankl weighed about 38 pounds.

He survived.

But outside the camp he was expecting an immense pain.

He discovered that his wife, parents and brother were dead.

He was alone.

Despite everything, he decided to start over.

He took over the ideas that had been torn to Auschwitz and turned them into a new book.

He was born like this.

In those pages he did not only tell the horrors of concentration camps.

He tried to explain how the human being could find meaning even in the most extreme circumstances.

At first, some publishers believed that the world was not ready for such a painful testimony.

Time proved otherwise.

The book was translated into dozens of languages, sold millions of copies and became one of the most read works of psychology and testimony in the world.

In the following years Viktor Frankl continued to teach, write and lecture. He remarried, had a daughter and remained active until the last years of his life.

He died in 1997.

The lesson he left was not born from theory, but from his experience.

He wrote that a person can be removed goods, health, freedom and even affections.

But there is always a freedom that no one can trust:

to choose your own attitude in the face of circumstances.

The Nazis tried to reduce Viktor Frankl to a number.

He transformed that suffering into a message that continues today to help millions of people reflect on the meaning of life.

Because we cannot always decide what happens to us.

But we can choose what to do with what remains.