Making Sense of Injustice
How A Holocaust Survivor Found
Purpose in the Darkest Moments
By Damodar Roe
The Resentment Rollercoaster
When you’ve been treated unfairly, it can turn your mind into an emotional rollercoaster. You remember every detail of the offense. And these memories become the tracks of the rollercoaster. Your mind follows the evidence up and down, around and around, working to expose their hypocrisy and corruption. You do this to clear your own name.
One moment you’re plunging down into the depths of self-pity, as you dwell on the unfairness that was done to you. The next moment, you’re soaring up to the heights of self-righteousness. You feel like the avenger who is meant to prove them wrong one day. Each emotional turn feels authentic in the moment, but this endless loop never brings you peace or stability.
People do things that don’t make sense. And you can never find peace by trying to make sense of something that honestly, makes no sense. That’s exactly the problem, my friend. You can compare their actions to what you think they should do, or how you believe you deserve to be treated. But all that effort might make your mind burn even more—while changing nothing.
I know what you’re thinking. Doesn’t it make perfect sense to tell the truth about them, and seek justice?
The fact that you feel this conviction proves that you have high ideals, a sensitive conscience, and strong willpower. You remember details others would forget because your memory is strong and you picture what should happen because your imagination vivid. You feel deeply because your heart is alive with loyalty and love. You wrestle with these questions because you have pride and a drive to find meaning in what happens. These are not the qualities of a shallow or careless person — they are the marks of someone whose nature carries depth and purpose. Those same gifts can trap you in resentment when they’re twisted by blame and negativity. But when you learn to channel them with resilience, gratitude, and creativity, they become the very powers that will lift you beyond resentment into a life worth living.
Holding onto what should happen feels like a lifeline when the world has gone crazy. It also proves that you exist and your pain matters. But as we’ll see in this article, the deeper challenge isn’t about denying what happened, or pretending that it’s okay. It’s about deciding whether you want your mind to be permanently chained to the wrongdoer. This is the toxic byproduct of resentment that holds you back from truly shining the way you should.
The freedom to assert control over the story of your own life comes from refusing the victim status. It comes from the power to forget about past wrongs, so you can instead focus on what truly matters.
In this article, we’ll explore the dangers of unchecked resentment, and how it can lead to tendencies that hurt you—like moral drifting, self-delusion, and addiction. We’ll also learn from the inspiring example of Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust. His story shows us how it’s possible to step off the resentment rollercoaster and build an identity and purpose that no one can take away.
The Impossible Rise of Viktor Frankl
Before World War II, Viktor Frankl was a rising psychiatrist in Austria. He was helping suicidal people while developing his own innovative treatment system called logotherapy. Newly married with a wife that he adored, he was a man with a future.
But as the Nazis gradually took power, all that was ripped away from him. First, he lost the right to work, simply because he was Jewish. Then he was deported. Eventually, he was sent to a concentration camp.
Arriving at the camp, Viktor had no idea what happened to his wife or parents. But it was clear from the beginning that their lives meant nothing to the authorities. With the point of a finger, a Nazi could send you to your death.
Viktor pleaded with the guards to keep the manuscripts of his life work, which he had poured himself into for years, but they threw it away like it was worthless. From then on, he was recognized as nothing more than a number stitched on a filthy uniform: 119,104. Starved, worked relentlessly, and humiliated—every day he was surrounded by cruelty so absurd it felt like the world had lost its mind.
One day, after hours of backbreaking work, Viktor paused for a moment to catch his breath. But just as he did, the guard looked at him, and perceiving only laziness, hurled a rock at his head. Narrowly avoiding it before getting back to work, Viktor thought: “Here I am: An educated man, a doctor, being treated worse than an animal.” It was so unfair. One moment, the Nazis accused you of being lazy for not helping other prisoners. The next, they punished you for going out of your way to help a struggling comrade. There was no consistency or fairness. Only humiliation for its own sake.
By every measure, Frankl had every right to be resentful. If anyone deserved to hate, to condemn, to plot revenge, it was him. And he did feel that way. Yet as time passed, he began to study how different individuals responded to the circumstances. He noticed what made people survive wasn’t physical advantages like more food or better shoes—sometimes the most well-built men succumbed to despair—it was the ability to maintain hope and find meaning in your life. The thing was, if you hated the Nazis too fervently, they would capture not only your body, but also your mind. And then you truly had nothing left.
Therefore, instead of trying to make sense of the situation by focusing on their wrongness, Viktor began a new kind of contemplation. It started with him picturing the smiling face of his wife. Even while he was following work orders, he discovered a kind of inner freedom to connect with the feeling of love by remembering her. It was a breakthrough. Next, he reconnected with his sense of humor. He joked with other prisoners about how it might be hard to shake their extreme habits even after they were free. Then came the simple joy of being kind to others for its own sake—a kind word here, a helpful act there. Gradually, Viktor even discovered more spiritual avenues for his mind. He thought about how he might use his realizations to help others once he was finally freed. He prayed. He looked for a meaning in life that didn’t depend on what you have or how others treat you.
Viktor realized that when you give into resentment, you become consumed by negative obsessions about the enemy. You lose your freedom to think of other things, to be positive, and to consciously choose your response to events. But he didn’t have to hand them over that power. Even if they ripped everything else away, they could never force him to give up the last of human freedoms: to embrace a resilient attitude and to make his own choices.
Viktor stopped fearing death. Instead, all he cared about from then on was making the most of the life he still had. The suffering and cruelty were still there until he was finally liberated by the Allied Forces. But he made a practice of finding things to be grateful for. And this changed the way he saw his situation. In the beginning, he saw himself and his fellow captives as victims to an evil regime. But he also began to notice discrepancies in that narrative. Sometimes he witnessed a Nazi show unexpected kindness—like giving his own ration of bread to a starving prisoner. Other times he saw fellow prisoners adopt the cruelty of the regime to gain selfish advantages. These were exceptional cases, of course. For the most part, the Nazis behaved like Nazis while the Jews were forced to act like captives. But Viktor realized that the line between good and evil isn’t drawn between groups. The line between good and evil runs down every individual’s heart, and our moment-to-moment choices make the difference in who we become. That’s why it’s so important to choose good, even when the way that others treat you is evil. And that’s how you prove to yourself that you’re still human.
The Victim-Avenger Mindset
When you feel mistreated, the humiliation can be unbearable. So you look for a way to make it right. And when you can’t find an actual pathway to change the situation, you create a pathway in your mind. This gives your mind delegated power. And your mind uses this power to give your pain a new meaning—one that you have complete control over. And this is done through narrative, blame, and fantasy. Because you have complete control over the story you tell, who you blame, and what you imagine should happen.
It happens in two phases:
First, your mind transforms your pain into a story.
You can’t change what happened in the past or control other people. But your mind has a creative workaround. Here’s how it works: your mind frames the wrongdoer’s action as a deliberate choice that they could have avoided. This serves as the proof that their intentions and character are evil. In contrast, your mind frames your reaction as an intentional act of virtue, like loyalty, empathy, or integrity. This lets you assume the role of the righteous victim, while casting them as the villain who bears full responsibility for the wrongdoing. Long story short, you give the facts a moral meaning, you identify as the victim, and you condemn them as evil.
This strategy isn’t dispassionate at all. It’s an art. You take whatever justifications or values they appeal to, like honor, and invert them as the opposite: “You say it’s strength, but it’s really your pathetic ego showing your weakness!” You paint the whole story in absolute, black-and-white terms: They are absolute evil, while you are far superior in comparison.
The blame might sound like this:
“I spent my life as a doctor, helping the poor, working for almost no money. But now, all that has been thrown away like garbage, and I have to do slave labor under the supervision of this animal. He stands there with his plump, fat pig’s face, staring at this emaciated slave that I’ve been forced to become. And all he can do is bark at me. Even when he hears that I am a duly qualified doctor, he twists it into another insult—accusing me of profiting off people’s misery. Apparently, healing the poor makes me the real criminal here.”
Second, your mind turns the pain into a debt.
Next, your mind turns your pain into a debt that you need to be compensated for. It decides that the wrongdoer owes it to you to either make amends or be punished. The problem is: you can’t force them to pay voluntarily. But you have a powerful memory and imagination. So you memorize every detail of what happened. Then you reimagine the event with a different ending, where you finally take what you’re owed—proving them wrong, assuming the dominant position, and enjoying your chance to be begged for forgiveness and make them suffer. In this way, the ending of the story changes to fit your sense of justice, even if only in imagination.
This fantasy is not dry. It drips with deep irony, symbolism, and personal domination. You subject them to a new moral order, where they eat their own shame, as you look down on them with glowing fire in your eyes. It’s a vivid image that you commit to epic poetry.
The fantasy might sound something like this:
“One day, this pig will be the one broken and starving, begging for mercy from men like me. And I will stand tall, strong again, and remind him of this day—of the rock he hurled at me, and the insults he spat without any respect. He will finally know who I truly am, and he will crumble with shame. Then the world itself will turn against him: the war lost, his power stripped away, his cruelty exposed before everyone. He will have no choice than to have his head crushed. And in that moment, justice will be mine.”
Long story short, when we refuse to accept what someone did to us, resentment drives our minds towards other ways to cope. They all revolve around new ways of to find a new meaning in those events—meanings that redeems our honor. We do this by controlling the narrative, claiming the moral high ground, and fantasizing about revenge. You can call this resentful storytelling.
It’s a story that you have a part in. First, you assume the role of the victim in the story. Then, you assume the right to become the avenger. And this is the story arc. We keep these roles alive and burning in our minds through a regular practice of remembering past wrongs, saying they were wrong, and fantasizing about justice. This is the resentment rollercoaster. And after a while, it consumes you so much that all you think about is the people you hate.
Viktor Frankl never suggested that the Nazis were justified, or that he was the one who needed to be reformed. That would be ridiculous. The Nazis, and anyone who scapegoats innocent people to justify murder, represents the absolute worst in human nature. It would be natural for anyone in Viktor Frankl’s position to hate them.
Understandably, Viktor started off with resentful storytelling, pitying himself as the victim and casting the Nazis as evil creatures. But he needed to hold onto some sort of freedom to make survival worthwhile. And under the severe circumstances, this could only be accomplished through freedom of thought. That’s what motivated him to leave behind the resentful storytelling, and become the author of his own story. You can call this empowered storytelling—where you don’t just sit there and control the narrative, cast judgments on people, and fantasize—but where you actually do something that is free and positive. You take action on your own initiative, and define yourself by this power, rather than defining yourself by what has been done to you. Long story short, you identify with your ability to respond to life, rather than identifying as the victim of what was done to you.
Viktor didn’t forgive the Nazis because they deserved it. Rather, he let go of his resentment because he wasn’t satisfied simply calling himself morally superior to the lowest of people. In fact, he realized that his dignity didn’t depend on proving them wrong at all. Instead, he found his human dignity in maintaining control over his own mind and choices, and not letting hatred twist and harden his heart into something negative. He outgrew self-pity, self-righteousness, and the roles of victim and avenger.
Instead, Viktor revived his original personality. And this opened up all sorts of new opportunities, even in the darkest moments. Externally, he still had to be inconspicuous and follow orders. But internally, he maintained his sense of self, and prepared for his eventual liberation from the Auschwitz concentration camp.
One of the most famous quotes from Viktor Frankl is:
“Between stimulus and response there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
When someone hurts or offends you, this is the stimulus. Your mind might automatically cast blame and tell a resentment story. But you don’t have to endorse this story, especially when it’s not serving you. The space between thought and belief is the gap where you have the spiritual freedom to choose the meaning of your own life, rather than allowing external and unconscious forces to determine the story for you. And you can use this freedom to seize control by telling yourself an empowering story, rather than telling yourself a resentful one. In other words, instead of absorbing your mind in blame and fantasy, you can find meaning in your own resilient attitude and meaningful choices. This is the ultimate freedom: refusing to let anyone take away who you are on the inside.
Justifying Addiction and Aggression
The resentful person takes a vow to never forget past wrongs until they are made right. And this means he has to use his willpower to keep those memories alive and burning. The thing is, the human mind isn’t very good at telling the difference between memory and reality. So the resentful person is almost always tense and disturbed, as if those events were still happening right now. His memories seem like current events.
When resentment becomes a war in your mind, you feel like you deserve better than how they treated you. But you can’t change the past or force them to want to change. So the unresolvable tension becomes an internal pressure that has to go somewhere. The two major outlets for this pressure are addiction and aggression.
At a certain point, the memory of past insults can become a resource that you use to justify whatever you wish to do in the present. You remember the insult, feel the pain as if it were still happening, and then you feel justified to do whatever you deem fit. You might even stir up your own resentment—as an act of self-sabotage—in order to generate the justification you need, especially after you fail to find a justification through more rational means. The more you remember past wrongs, the more urgently it seems that something must be done about this!
Addiction:
You start to think that, since you don’t deserve to feel this way, you would be justified to take the edge off a little. So you engage in habits that quickly and effectively make you feel better. A common one for men is to look at pornography, because this stimulates the illusion of being wanted by beautiful women, and therefore, of being high status. This illusion offers a pleasant, risk-free escape to the man who resents being rejected as unworthy. Other escapes include overeating, scrolling endlessly on social media, binge-watching, drinking, abusing drugs, gambling, overworking, and so on. Basically any habit which creates an experience of pleasure and forgetfulness of your woes.
Viktor saw this addictive tendency in the concentration camps. They were given cigarettes as payment for their labor, and they had to use them like currency to trade for food to survive. But when they saw someone actually smoking his cigarettes, they knew he had given up on life. Others worked towards the position of “capo”, where they were rewarded with minor privileges like alcohol for being cruel to other Jews. Drinking became a way to escape the pain of concentration camp life, as well as the guilt of becoming a Nazi tool.
The lesson is clear: when we refuse to face painful realities, emotional reasoning steps in to justify cheap escapes. And those escapes, whether they’re through fantasy or addiction, only deepen the vicious cycle. First you absorb your mind in self-pity, then you justify addictive habits, then you feel more guilty, and then you want to numb again. But you need more justification, so you dwell on past wrongs again. In this way, you take a difficult life situation, and turn it into dismal and hopeless cycle of indulgent self-harm that makes things even worse.
Aggression:
When resentment takes over, you don’t weigh whether a choice is good or bad in itself. In other words, you don’t ask: “Is it wrong to kill?” Instead, you assume that your pain and indignation is a debt that must be repaid. You ask, “Do they deserve to be killed?” And as long as you feel offended enough to inflict suffering to that degree, you believe they do.
If someone points the finger at you, you defend yourself with comparisons—at least you’re “not as bad as them.” If they question your actions, you insist that “they deserved it.” In this mindset, you make yourself the judge, jury, and executioner. There is no limit to what you can justify. You simply have to reduce the wrongdoer down to two-dimensional or sub-human caricature, calling them a “scumbag,” “cockroach,” or “demon.” Then you feel justified treating them like one. In this way, you decide that the defining moment of their character is the particular moment they did something you didn’t like. And with absolute self-righteousness, you act on that dehumanizing rhetoric with self-righteous vengeance.
What follows is an action you can’t take back after you’ve clicked the send button, or pulled the trigger. And it doesn’t lead to anything positive. Either you drown in guilt and shame for what you’ve said or done, or you have to numb yourself with even deeper denial and addictive escapes to avoid accountability.
When we absorb our minds in resentment, the villain in the story actually becomes the foundation of our moral judgements. We’re no longer for something positive; instead, we’re just against someone we perceive as negative. We engage in reactive justifications for poor choices, and all our moral judgements revolve around the wrongness of the perceived villain. Consequently, we lose touch with what we used to believe before the betrayal or injustice. And we say and do things that erode our intellectual and moral integrity.
The solution in both these cases, addiction and aggression, is to think about what kind of person you want to become. As long as you make moral justifications based on the memory of wrongs against you, the expectation to be repaid, and the demonization of others, you will be lost. But when you start thinking past the injustice, and start moving towards something positive, you become free. Therefore, stop thinking that anyone deserves anything, and start acting the way you believe is right.
Viktor described it this way:
“The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation, he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not.”
Making Sense of Injustice
Resentment feeds on the comparisons. For example:
“I am a qualified doctor, but they treated me like an animal.”
Resentment leads our minds to find the particular comparisons that provide maximum contrast between what people do and what we assume they should do. This is the art of blame. Then we add a sarcastic twist to further deepen their assumed wrongness. It might sound something like this:
“Oh yes, forgive me for forgetting my place. What an upstart I am to think that years of education that meant that I deserved to be treated with the most basic respect. Apparently, holding my head high is a bigger crime than the sadism of men who will kill you for the smallest mistake.”
Then the comparisons multiply. You notice how unremorseful they are, and how the world rewards them while you are left wounded. The obsessive demand to right the wrong drives you crazy. And each perceived injustice you keep in mind makes the obsession louder: you deserved better, but they stole your honor and ignored your pain!
The story owns you. You’re forced to wait for people to do what you think is right, and all you can do is hate them until they do. This dependence leaves you in a weak position, potentially forever.
Viktor stopped looking for meaning in what could not control, and looked for it in what he could control—his attitude and choices. First, he stopped interpreting Nazi cruelty as a personal insult. Yes, it was inhumane, but it was not a personal referendum on his worth as a person. After all, they didn’t know him. Their hate was superficial. And that didn’t change the fact that he was, indeed, still a real person. He stopped thinking about what was fair, and accepted the challenges that came with his fate. Concentration camp was not a bad dream to wake up from, or a sentence to surrender to. It was simply a reality to respond to with courage and dignity—the courage and dignity that proved he was still human.
Until Viktor was eventually freed from the camp, he couldn’t do much differently when it came to the daily routine of labor and starvation. But he found opportunities to care for himself and others without risking anyone’s life, including his own. And in his mind, he began to work through the manuscript of his life’s work that had been thrown away by the Nazis. He strengthened his therapeutic method by applying it to his own situation. And he helped others hold onto hope.
This shift—from looking for meaning in what you can’t control to what you can—is profound for one simple reason. You ultimately can’t control what other people think or do. But you can control what you think and do. So when you look for meaning there, you become a passive character in someone else’s story. But by embracing a resilient attitude and finding meaning in your own choices, you become the author of your own. You’re able to think and act in beautiful, positive ways, rather than ugly, vindictive ones.
The secret is to ask different questions:
Instead of asking, “why me?”
Viktor asked, “What is life asking of me right now, in order to live meaningfully, no matter what anyone else does?”
Instead of asking, “How could they do that?”
Viktor asked, “What kind of response reflects the person I want to become?”
Instead of asking, “When will I get justice so that I can finally rest?”
Viktor asked, “What can I control right now, and what is simply my fate?”
By making sense of injustice in this way, you can rewrite the story in a way where you no longer play the victim or the avenger. You can finally escape the resentment rollercoaster. And that’s not the end of the story. It’s only the beginning of the story that you get to write, as you move beyond the injustice.
From Victim to Victor
Considering yourself the victim, proclaiming you didn’t deserve it, and feeling sorry for yourself, are like the seatbelt that keeps you locked into the resentment rollercoaster. Demanding “justice”, being self-righteous, and delighting in your moral superiority, are like the engine that keeps the ride going around in loops, year after year. These drives are absolutely toxic. However, there are deeper, valid needs which they attempt to serve. And rather than simply having to give them up, you can replace them with something better.
When you identify as the victim in the story, you a kind of feel self-pity that tells you, “I didn’t deserve this.” Psychologically, this removes the doubt that you might have made a mistake. It’s also a shield against guilt and shame. But it comes at the cost of making you wait helplessly for someone else to make the situation right. And this is disempowering.
Therefore, to combat this sense of helpless waiting, you assume a new role. You identify as the avenger in the story, and you feel a kind of self-righteousness that tells you, “I am better than them.” This lifts you out of the pit of despair and hopelessness by restoring a sense of purpose. But it also locks you into a world of negative reactivity. It alienates you from your original values, and makes you do things that erode your self-respect.
What you need is a truly empowering way to heal from the damage that was done, and take back control over your mind and life! There is a way to transform your self-pity into healing and your self-righteousness into purpose, without the endless waiting and uncertainty. It all centers around taking responsibility for your own healing, rather than waiting on others; and taking powerful actions based on your personal values, rather than assuming a pitiful or vindictive role against anyone else.
When you take responsibility for your healing, your self-pity transforms into self-compassion. You stop waiting for the perpetrator to repair the wound. This is because it’s no longer a story that’s incomplete until they do something, or a debt that remains until they pay it. There are other solutions. So you also stop making excuses for addictive escapes or unprincipled outlashes against others. And instead, you do whatever it takes to heal yourself back to health. Part of that is affirming your own self-worth, without needing the wrongdoer’s apology. And part of it is finding the empathy and validation you need from a trustworthy third party. Amazingly, this has the same transformative effect you hope to get from “justice.” Once your pain is healed, you no longer need cheap escapes to forget your pain. It’s faint enough to bear with dignity.
When you make a commitment to act according to your personal values, even when others are being unfair, your self-righteousness transforms into courageous integrity. And even when you’re struggling to do the right thing, you can still encourage yourself. You don’t have to be perfect or bigger than someone else. It’s the quiet conviction that even in difficulty, you can take the next step forward with integrity. Instead of hating the wrongdoer, you refuse to let them define you. You move forward positively with your life, not letting anyone stop you.
Therefore, take responsibility for your healing and move forward according to your own values. Then you will no longer have any need for resentment.
Conclusion
The resentful mind is already a master at finding meaning in experiences. You take scraps of memory and turn them into stories of right and wrong, victim and villain, proof and verdict. That ability to interpret and connect events is a real strength—but when it’s fueled by self-pity and righteousness, it chains your personal worth to the recognition of those who hurt you. And this is a trap that keeps you trying to make sense of what makes no sense. It will drive you insane.
But when you take that same strength, you can use it to remember who you are and write your own story. Viktor Frankl’s life is an incredible example of this. The key is to take care of the emotional wound with compassion, rather than demanding repayment, and to take action with integrity rather than looking down on others. That’s what Frankl did, even in the worst possible circumstances, and it transformed him from a victim to a victor.
We hardly encounter such appalling hardships as Viktor Frankl. But the same opportunity is still there in any situation. You don’t have to excuse the wrongdoing or pretend it never happened. But you can decide what it means to you. It could be a stain on your reputation that you fight forever to remove. It could just be an event that means nothing about you. Or, it could even be the very challenge which makes for an adventurous journey of personal growth. The choice is yours. But the most empowering perspective is always to find meaning in your own choices, rather than those of others, and take your next step with courage, rather than resentment. Because when you do, you realize that your dignity is not as something that others must return to you. It’s something they never had the power to take away in the first place.
Thanks for reading!
In this article, how to find meaning in your life even when the way people treat you makes no sense.
This shift is possible. But it rarely happens alone. Escaping the grip of resentment is no small task. The traps are subtle, and they feed on your best intentions.
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