View a FREE sample

This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why does the author, himself a concentration camp survivor, write, "We know: the best of us did not return"?
(a) This quote is taken from a paragraph in which the author writes that the humblest prisoners were the earliest to be killed by the SS officers.
(b) The author claims that this is the case because he deeply misses his family members who died at Auschwitz.
(c) The author believes this because the prisoners kept themselves alive by brutally and dishonestly fighting for their existence.
(d) The author feels that the most defiant prisoners, those who stood up to the SS officers, were immediately killed.

2. Who does the author describe smoking in the concentration camps?
(a) The Capo and the suicidal.
(b) Prison doctors.
(c) The prisoners who worked in the kitchen.
(d) Railway workers.

3. What job did Frankl do in freezing temperatures out of doors?
(a) He worked on icky train tracks.
(b) He worked on the roof of the prison director's building.
(c) He worked in the sewage pits.
(d) He worked in an open-air hospital.

4. What did Frankl visit with the camp's chief doctor?
(a) A conference.
(b) A dinner with the SS.
(c) A meeting.
(d) A spiritual seance.

5. Why does the author, after leaving camp, upon seeing an image of prisoners lying on their bunks, argue that these aren't horrible images?
(a) They are images of men from the Capo who had been demoted, and one of them had been in a position to be cruel to the author before this demotion.
(b) They are images of sick prisoners who could stay in bed all day.
(c) They were images of people who had been spared the gas chambers.
(d) They are images of men that he knew, and all of them survived.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Frankl argue hurts most about being hit?

2. Where does the author of the book travel in a "prison car" with small peepholes?

3. How does the author describe the Capos?

4. When Frankl was scheduled to be transported to another camp, what did the chief doctor do?

5. What kind of sickness affected most of the prisoners in 1945?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Frankl describe a "delusion of reprieve"?

2. Due to the difficult conditions and the need to fight for survival, which prisoners does Frankl claim were most likely to survive life in the concentration camp?

3. According to the first section of the text, "Experiences in a Concentration Camp," what advantages did the Capo have over normal prisoners?

4. According to Frankl, what characterizes the prisoners' thinking when they first arrive at camp?

5. As a new prisoner in camp, what decision did Frankl believe "marked the culminating point of the first phase of [his] psychological reaction"?

6. How did the SS respond to changing the list of prisoners who would board transport that would transfer prisoners to another camp or would send them to the gas chambers?

7. After the initial mental phase that was characterized by shock, what characterized the second phase that Frankl noticed in his fellow prisoners and in himself?

8. How does Frankl categorize the psychological response to such an abnormal situation as life in a concentration camp?

9. In the section on "Experiences in a Concentration Camp," Frankl describes a physical condition that affected "nearly all the camp inmates." What was this condition? How did it affect Frankl?

10. In "Experiences in a Concentration Camp," what does Frankl write happened when a train was prepared to transport prisoners?

(see the answer keys)

This section contains 1,180 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample