The conflict in Israel, along with my ongoing interest in Holocaust survivors and Mary Burkett’s “Beloved Children of the Holocaust” art, recently inspired my daughter to give me a wonderful book: “The Choice,” by Dr. Edith Eva Eger.
Dr. Eger experienced unspeakable horrors in 1944 at age 16, when Jews in her native Hungary were rounded up and sent to death camps. She watched as her mother was sent to the gas chamber with other prisoners who were older or less capable of hard work, along with the very young. “Edie” and her older sister each coped in their own way while trying to encourage the other, until American troops liberated the camps in 1945.
Edith’s physical condition deteriorated to the point of being tossed in a pile of corpses; the liberation forces came just in time, but the road to true freedom would be a long one. “The Choice” describes that journey, as Edith spent decades struggling with survivor’s guilt while raising a family, immigrating to the United States, and studying to be a psychologist. The stories of her horrific experiences are interwoven alongside stories of her clients, sharing her own journey to healing even as she has helped others heal. Now in her 90s, Dr. Eger still practices psychology. During her career she has worked with many patients suffering traumatic stress disorders, including speaking to military personnel and other Holocaust survivors.
As Dr. Eger worked to overcome her own anger, shame and guilt, often seeing more clearly her own needs while helping her patients with theirs, she realized we can be imprisoned in our own minds. With guidance from her mentor Dr. Viktor Frankl, whose own Holocaust experience inspired his classic “Man’s Search for Meaning,” Dr. Eger describes the choice we all can make to find keys to freedom, even in the worst of circumstances.
One of the book’s powerful passages describes Edith, a trained ballerina, being forced to dance for Nazi “Angel of Death” officer Dr. Josef Mengele, just hours after her parents were killed. She uses ballet as a touchpoint for many choices she had to make, including her response when she was cut from her country’s gymnastics team due to being Jewish—and she still ends presentations with a high kick.
I used an entire pad of sticky flags marking the book as I recognized myself in so many of Dr. Eger’s examples, but one statement I found particularly insightful is in the first chapter, “There is no hierarchy of suffering . . . I don’t want you to hear my story and say, ‘My own suffering is less significant.’ I want you to hear my story and say, ‘If she can do it, then so can I!” (p. 8).
Dr. Eger continues to inspire healing in audiences and maintains an active and encouraging social media presence. Find her on Facebook or at https://dreditheger.com, where you can also find “The Gift,” practical steps for applying the principles in the first book, and pre-order “The Ballerina of Auschwitz,” an adaptation of “The Choice” for young adult readers.
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