“[One day] when the transport of sick patients for the ‘rest camp’ was organized, my name (that is, my number) was put on the list, since a few doctors were needed.  But no one was convinced that the destination was really a rest camp.  A few weeks previously the same transport had been
prepared.  Then, too, everyone had thought it was destined for the gas ovens.  When it was announced that anyone who volunteered for the dreaded night shift would be taken off the transport list, eighty-two prisoners volunteered immediately.  A quarter of an hour later the
transport was canceled, but the eighty two stayed on the list for the night shift.  For the majority of them, this meant death within the next fortnight.

“Now the transport for the rest camp was arranged for the second time. Again no one knew whether this was a ruse to obtain the last bit of work from the sick—if only for fourteen days—or whether it would go to the gas ovens or to a genuine rest camp.  The chief doctor, who had taken a liking to me, told me furtively one evening at a quarter to ten, ‘I have made in known in the orderly room that you can still have your name crossed off the list; you may do so up till ten o’clock.’  “I told him that this was not my way; that I had learned to let fate take its course. ‘I might as well stay with my friends,’ I said.  There was a look of pity in his eyes, as if he knew….He shook my hand silently, as though it were a farewell, not for life, but from life.
Slowly I walked back to my hut.  There I found a good friend waiting for me.

‘You really want to go with them?’ he asked sadly.

 ‘Yes, I am going.’

 Tears came to his eyes and I tried to comfort him….”
 

Frankl goes on to say that he got aboard the transport as scheduled, and thankfully, he was sent to a rest camp, not to the ovens as everyone had feared.  He goes on to say that it was fortunate that he did leave.

“Those who had pitied me remained in a camp where famine was to rage even more fiercely than in our new camp.  They tried to save themselves, but they only sealed their own fates.  Months later, after liberation, I met a friend from the old camp.  He related to me how he, as camp policeman, had searched for a piece of human flesh that was missing from a pile of corpses.  He confiscated it from a pot in which he found it cooking.  Cannibalism had broken out.  I had left just in time.”
 

At this point in his story, Frankl refers to an allegorical parable, “Death in Teheran,” using it to illustrate his belief that if he had tried to cheat fate in order to enhance his chances of survival, he could have actually brought about his early death:

“Does this not bring to mind the story of Death in Teheran?  A rich and mighty Persian once walked in his garden with one of his servants.  The servant cried that he had just encountered Death, who had threatened him.  He begged his master to give him his fastest horse so that he
could make haste and flee to Teheran, which he could reach that same evening.  The master consented and the servant galloped off on the horse.  On returning to his house, the master himself met Death, and questioned him.  ‘Why did you terrify and threaten my servant?’
 ‘I did not threaten him; I only showed surprise in still finding him here when I planned to meet him tonight in Teheran,’ said Death.

 “The camp inmate was frightened of making decisions and of taking any sort of initiative whatsoever.  This was the result of a strong feeling that fate was one’s master, and that one must not try to influence it in any way, but instead let it take its own course.  In addition, there was
a great apathy, which contributed in no small part to the feelings of the prisoner.  At times, lightning decisions had to be made, decisions which spelled life or death.  The prisoner would have preferred to let fate make the choice for him.
 

Frankl, Victor.  Man’s Search for Meaning, Revised and Updated.  New York:Washington Square Press, 1984.  (75-77)