Status Updates From Man's Search For Meaning

“man has both potentialities within himself. which one is actualized depends on decisions, but not on conditions. our generation is realistic for we have come to know man as he really is. after all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of auschwitz. however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright with the lord’s prayer or the shema yisrael on his lips.”

"Al hombre se le puede arrebatar todo salvo una cosa, la última de las libertades humanas: la elección de la actitud personal ante un conjunto de circunstancias para decidir su propio camino."

“one day, a few days after the liberation, i walked through the country past flowering meadows for miles and miles[…]. larks rose to the sky and i could hear their joyous song. there was no one to be seen for miles around. there was nothing but the wide earth and sky and the larks’ jubilation and the freedom of space. i stopped and looked around. and then up to the sky. and then i went down on my knees.”

Now that I am reading about those awful tortures and indignities the people at the concentration camps had had to endure, I only have one question: why? Who was the one who once woke up and decided he can dictate the new morales?! And, what scares me even more - what are the odds the same thing can not happen again?