Hope: The Bedrock of Spiritual Progress: Hope—the recognition within the human heart that something better is attainable—can mean the difference between life and death. In Man’s Search for Meaning, Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl writes that the rate of deaths in the concentration camp increased after Hanukkah, even though there was no change in camp’s already horrible conditions. Why did more die? Because each year rumors spread that the prisoners would be freed in time for the holy festival, and when they were not, the prisoners lost hope, their immune system weakened, and they succumbed to a fatal disease. Hope had kept them alive, and when their hope left, they died.