Frankl’s From Death Camp to Existentialism

I just reread the first thirty pages of Victor Frankl’s 1960s book in which he discusses his time as a prisoner  in Auschwitz. I skimmed the rest.  In the beginning of  his account the train of inmates approaches a camp and he sees the sign for Auschwitz and comments that it brought with it the fears of gas chambers, crematories and massacres. Frankl mentions gas chambers copiously in the section on Auschwitz but although there is a description of the chimney of a crematory  with flames coming out of the top  there is nowhere  a description of gas chambers- either the inside or the outside – or of a massacre. Elie Wiesel in Night which is an autobiographical novel that admits to being partly fictionalized also mentions a crematory chimney with fire belching out. And there is mention of a massacre in which inmates are shot and killed in a pit. But similarly there is no  description of gas chambers. Wiesel recounts that he was in Auschwitz only a few weeks but Frankl was there presumably much longer because he relates extensive accounts of his experience on a work crew. Frankl says that he spent three years in various concentration camps. I am guessing that he spent at least a year in Auschwitz because his account of that part takes about 30 out of 90 pages. Frankl would have had time to locate and see at least the outside of gas chambers if there had been any because they would have been near the chimney of the crematory which he saw and there presumably would have been  lines outside them because hundreds must have been gassed every day to reach the total of  one million. Frankl also mentions inmates with typhus and relates that he spent some time as a doctor in housing for those who were dying from it. Maybe the use of crematory ovens was for the substantial number of inmates dying daily from typhus. Anyway, both accounts are powerfully written and I recommend them. Their style is very sombre with an atmosphere of resignation although the sense of resignation is much more prolonged and poignant  in Frankl’s book. They both make for good existentialist literature. It was no picnic being an inmate at Auschwitz. But were there gas chambers?