What a Holocaust Survivor Can Teach us about COVID-19

Shoes on the Danube Bank, Budapest, Hungary, Holocaust memorial.

The global pandemic has caused widespread illness, fear, anxiety, and uncertainty. Almost every person, in every country in the world, has experienced some kind of discomfort due to COVID-19, with many suffering in profound ways. Take those who have lost loved ones, are suffering from the illness, or have lost income, and certainty about their future. Then there are those who have missed out on funerals, and been separated from loved ones by strict borders. Further still there are most of us who have missed weddings, overseas holidays, and birthday parties. It’s no surprise that anxiety is on the rise, with many feeling disconnected and disempowered and with most wondering when things will be ‘normal’ again.

So how do we cope in uncertain times? How can we keep a cool head, whilst case numbers keep rising and things feel out-of-control?

I asked myself this very question, and the answer came in the form of a book: Viktor Frankl’s, Man’s Search for Meaning. The book tells a first-person-account of one of the worst horrors humankind could ever inflict: life as a prisoner in death-camp Auschwitz.

Not only did Frankl survive the holocaust; he used the experience to create a kind of guide for life, which many have useful for difficult times. From this tomb of information we can learn something about our own…