Edith Eger
It was May 4, 1945. World War II was coming to an end and American forces were liberating the inmates of Nazi concentration camps. In an Austrian camp, a young American soldier noticed a small hand moving slightly amongst a number of dead bodies. It was that of Edith, a Jewish survivor. He quickly summoned medical help and brought her back from the brink of death.
Before the war, Edith lived with her parents Lajos and Ilona Elefánt and two sisters Magda and Clara in Kassa, Hungary. Edith took ballet lessons and was also a member of the Hungarian Olympic team in gymnastics. In 1942, the Hungarian government enacted new anti-Jewish laws and she was removed from the gymnastics team. Edith was just sixteen, when the war broke out. She, her parents, and her sister Magda were taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Hours after her parents were killed in the gas chamber, the notorious Nazi officer Dr. Josef Mengele (called the Angel of Death) forced Edith to dance for his amusement and her survival. In return, she received a loaf of bread that she shared with other girls, who would later save her life. Edith and Magda survived all the horrors of the camps.
As the Americans and Russians entered Europe, the Nazis evacuated many concentration camps. Edith and Magda were sent on a death march to the Gunskirchen concentration camp, at a distance of about 55 km. When she was about to collapse, the girls with whom she had shared Mengele’s bread carried her on. Conditions in Gunskirchen were so bad that Edith had to eat grass to survive, while other prisoners turned to cannibalism.
When Edith was rescued, she weighed just 32 kg, had a broken back, typhoid fever, pneumonia and pleurisy. Edith and Magda recovered in American field hospitals and returned to Kassa where they found their sister Clara. Edith married Béla (Albert) Eger, also a Jewish survivor and member of a resistance group during the war. In 1949, after threats from the communists, they fled together with their daughter to the United States.
In 1969 she received a degree in Psychology from the University of Texas, El Paso. She then pursued her doctoral internship at the William Beaumont Army Medical Center at Fort Bliss, Texas. Edith Eger has a clinical practice in La Jolla, California and holds a faculty appointment at the University of California, San Diego.
Edith Eger spent decades struggling with flashbacks and survivor’s guilt and was determined to stay silent and hide the past. However, she became a friend of the famous psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, Dr. Viktor Frankl, and underwent therapy. Thirty-five years after the war ended, she returned to Auschwitz and was finally able to fully heal and forgive the one person she had been unable to forgive—herself.
She has appeared on numerous television programs including CNN and the Oprah Winfrey Show. She was the primary subject of a Holocaust documentary that appeared on Dutch National Television. She often gives talks to groups in the US and abroad.
Edith has helped countless people to overcome trauma and other problems. She says she wants to help guide people to get rid of the concentration camp that’s in their own mind, and show them the key is always in one’s pocket. In an interview, Edith Eger says, “Auschwitz taught me how you find power within you when nothing comes from without. The more you depend on someone to make you happy, you’re never going to be happy because you become more externally oriented. Auschwitz was a classroom where I discovered the power within me that I carry today at 91, telling people how not to live in the past, because there is only one thing we cannot ever change, and that’s the past.”
At the age of 90, Edith Eger published her memoir entitled The Choice: Embrace the Possible and it became an international bestseller. In the book, Edith weaves her remarkable personal journey with the moving stories of those she has helped heal. She explores how we can be imprisoned in our own minds and shows us how to find the key to freedom. The Choice is a life-changing book that will provide hope and comfort to generations of readers.
In 2020, Edith followed with another book The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life. In this book, she expands on her message of healing and provides a hands-on guide that gently encourages us to change the thoughts and behaviors that may be keeping us imprisoned in the past.
Afterword: Several talks and interviews of Edith Eger can be found on YouTube and on websites.