VIKTOR FRANKL (26 Mac 1905 – 2 Sept 1997)
Siapakah beliau? Seorang Neurologist dan Psychiatrist berbangsa Austria yang juga seorang Holocaust survivor. Apa yang menarik tentang beliau ni? Ya, beliau seorang Yahudi, kenapa kita nak ikut seorang Yahudi. Bukan tentang itu yang saya nak kongsikan. Tapi pengalamannya semasa menjadi tahanan Nazi semasa era Holocaust sekitar 1940 an. Beliau bersama isteri dan ibu bapanya ditahan di kem tahanan Theresienstadt pada September 1942 dan dipindahkan ke beberapa kem tahanan yang lain.
Mungkin telah terbayang di mata kita kekejaman Nazi menjalankan pembersihan etnik Yahudi pada era kegemilangannya. Dan Viktor Frankl Berjaya mengharunginya. Bapa beliau menemui ajal setelah menderita pneumonia dan pulmonary edema, ibunya dibunuh dan begitu juga isterinya. Beliau sendiri melalui pelbagai kesengsaraan diseksa, dimalukan dan didera dengan pelbagai cara. Persoalannya, bagaimana dia mengharunginya, tanpa kehilangan nyawa dan kewarasan? Beliau melihat segala kesengsaraan dan penderitaan yang ditanggung olehnya dan tahanan yang lain sebagai sesuatu yang member makna lain dalam kehidupan. Berikut adalah petikan ideanya:
... We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road leading from the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his mouth behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."
That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.
A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth -- that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory...." (Man's Search for Meaning, Part One, "Experiences in a Concentration Camp", Viktor Frankl, pages 56-57 in the Pocket Books edition)
Jadi, sama-sama kita belajar melihat setiap yang kita lalui daripada perspektif dan paradigma yang lebih positif, kerana dalam Islam juga mengungkap; ada hikmah disebalik setiap sesuatu.
Wallahualam
Wallahualam
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