Frankl begins his personal narrative when he is traveling to Auschwitz by train. He was transported with 1,500 people, with 80 people in each car. They could see enough to notice the sign for Auschwitz, which was already known as a death camp. This is when Frankl and the others felt what he labels the initial state of “shock” that characterizes every prisoner’s experience.

Upon arriving at the camp, the important moment came when Frankl faced the first selection, which he had no way of understanding. An SS officer reviewed the prisoners as they filed up to him and he pointed them either to his left or to his right.  Frankl was pointed to the right. Only later did he learn that those who went to the left were killed immediately in the gas chambers and that only about ten percent of the new prisoners survived to be kept on as slave laborers.

“I 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.