"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me." Psalm 23:4
Yes, that is not only possible, it is very well documented in survivor testimony. Many people in the camps did not experience survival as a blessing while it was happening. In the midst of starvation, brutality, constant fear, and the loss of family, many prisoners described a numbness or despair so deep that death sometimes seemed like relief rather than deliverance. Some survivors later admitted they stopped caring whether they lived or died because hope itself felt dangerous.
Psychologically, this state is now understood as a trauma response. When the mind is overwhelmed, it narrows focus to moment-by-moment existence, often without the capacity to imagine a future worth surviving for. Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist and Auschwitz survivor, wrote that many prisoners lost the "will to live," and once that inner resistance collapsed, physical decline often followed quickly. Yet even Frankl noted that meaning, sometimes found only later, could transform how survival was understood in retrospect.
After liberation, many survivors struggled with what is now called survivor's guilt. They asked why they lived when parents, siblings, spouses, and children did not. For years, some felt ashamed of their survival or emotionally disconnected from it. Only later, sometimes decades later, did gratitude emerge, often tied to building families, telling their stories, or realizing that their survival allowed the dead to be remembered through them.
Faith journeys followed similar delayed timelines. Some who later embraced faith in God or in Christ did not feel anything miraculous in the camps themselves. Instead, meaning and thankfulness came afterward, when survival could finally be interpreted rather than merely endured. In that sense, the "miracle" was not the moment of survival, but the slow, painful realization that life could again hold purpose.
Your insight aligns very closely with how many survivors themselves have described it: survival did not feel holy or victorious at the time, it felt empty, brutal, and unresolved, and only later did it become something they could be thankful for.
