Frankl opens with his firsthand account of life in Nazi concentration camps, observing that prisoners who maintained some sense of purpose or meaning — even amid extreme deprivation and suffering — were more likely to survive than those who lost all sense of purpose.

Key observations from this account:

• Frankl noticed that prisoners who held onto a specific reason to live — a loved one to return to, unfinished work, a personal conviction — showed greater psychological resilience than those who saw no future worth surviving for
• He describes his own use of imagining future conversations with his wife and envisioning completing his psychological work as sources of meaning that sustained him through the camps
• This firsthand, deeply personal account grounds the more theoretical psychological framework Frankl develops in the second half of the book

This opening memoir section establishes the lived, tested foundation for Frankl's broader psychological theory of meaning.