She’s about 6 years old, delighting in her body’s strength, flexibility and grace – and stretching into a full split. Edith Eger’s Hungarian ballet master claps with joy then lifts her off the ground and over his head.
“Editke,” he says, “all your ecstasy in life is going to come from the inside.” The young dancer will remember those words and a similar refrain by her mother years later when she comes face to face with Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous Angel of Death, in Auschwitz.
Three sisters: Magda, Edie, and Klara
The youngest of three girls, Edie Eger grew up in Kassa, Hungary, one of Europe’s largest Jewish communities, which became Kosice with the creation of Czechoslovakia. Her mother made clear she would never be beautiful like Magda, the oldest sister. Klara, the middle sister and violin prodigy, had the talent; she was the only Jewish girl accepted by the music conservatory in Budapest. Edie had the brains.
The Last Seder
At her family’s Passover Seder. Edie, 16, is asking the four questions At the end of the meal, her father cries and kisses Magda and Edie on the head. Klara, forewarned, has stayed in Budapest. In the middle of the night German soldiers pound on their door, storm into the bedroom and spirit the family away to a brickworks factory with other interned Jews. Edie wears a blue silk dress with bows. They are allowed one suitcase for four people.
"Just remember, no one can take away from you what you’ve put in your mind.”
Weeks later in a dark crowded train bound for Auschwitz, her mother tells Edie, “We don’t know where we’re going. We don’t know what’s going to happen. Just remember, no one can take away from you what you’ve put in your mind.”
When the cattle car doors open in May 1944, a sign proclaiming “Arbeit Macht Frei” greets the Jews of Kosice. The Nazis separate them into men’s and women’s lines. Edie doesn’t realize she will never see her father again. Mengele commands her mother to go to the left. “You’re going to see your mother very soon. She’s just going to take a shower,” he says ominously.
A female kapo coldly dashes Eger’s hopes. Pointing to smoke from distant chimneys, she says, “Your mother is burning in there.”
Staring at the chimney atop the building their mother had entered, her sister Magda reassures her, “The soul never dies.”
No One Can Take Away Your Thoughts
“I heard every day that I was never going to get out alive,” Eger recalled in a recent Zoom lecture hosted by Chabad Intown Atlanta. When hopelessness overwhelmed her, she thought of her mother’s words as they pressed together in the dark crowded cattle car. “No one can take away from you what you’ve put in your mind.”
She thought of her boyfriend and their picnics by the river, envisioning the future they had planned. She focused on helping her sister Magda survive the hell in which they found themselves.
Commanded to entertain Mengele with a ballet performance, Eger imagined herself dancing for fans at the Budapest opera house. By some miracle, she was able to view the seasoned killer before her as a pitiful prisoner of his evil choices. She was free in her mind, which he could never be. Her performance netted her a loaf of bread – which she shared with Magda and their bunkmates, a gesture that would later save her life. They would lift her up when she stumbled on a death march to a subcamp of Mauthausen, too weak to walk.
Edith and Bela
In May 1945, American soldiers discovered her lying in an Austrian forest, barely alive beneath a pile of dead bodies, with a broken back, typhoid fever, pneumonia and pleurisy. After a year when her body had healed, she married Bela Eger – a Hungarian man she had met in a tuberculosis hospital in the Tatra Mountains – and became a mother. Healing her mind, however, would take much longer. It became her passion and vocation after they settled in the United States.
No Prozac in Auschwitz
In her first book, The Choice, which she wrote at age 90, Dr. Edith Eger recounted her life before the Holocaust, when she was training for the Olympics as a gymnast, and after the war, when she reared a family, went to college and earned a doctorate in clinical psychology. The energetic great-grandmother maintains a busy clinical practice and holds a faculty appointment at the University of California, San Diego. She also serves as a consultant for the U.S. Army and Navy in resiliency training and the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Eger has been called a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of choice in our lives.
“I’ll be forever changed by her story,” Oprah Winfrey says.
Eger’s new book, The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life, released in September, serves as a practical guide to the healing she has done in her own life and with patients in her clinical work.
In each chapter she explores a common prison of the mind, closing with the keys to free ourselves.
For instance, in “No Prozac at Auschwitz,” she reminds readers that the opposite of depression is expression, and encourages us to feel so we can heal. As she says, “What comes out of you doesn’t make you sick; what stays in there does.”
The title of the chapter came from one of her patients, a physician addicted to prescription drugs. He said he had realized there was no Prozac at Auschwitz – no way to self-medicate, numb out, forget the pain of hunger, torture and imminent death.
Don’t Call Me Shrink; Call Me Stretch
In an exclusive interview with Aish.com, Eger quipped, “I tell people don’t call me ‘shrink,’ call me ‘stretch.’ I stretch people’s comfort zones. I ask you to face all your fears, because fear and love don’t co-exist.”
The 5-foot ballerina with twinkling eyes and glowing face takes her own advice. “For many years I had tremendous problems with anger,” she admits. “Forgiveness is release, and I couldn’t let go until I gave myself permission to feel and express my rage. I finally asked my therapist to sit on me, to hold me down so I had a force to push against, so I could release a primal scream.”
"The worst prison is not the one the Nazis put me in. The worst prison is the one I built for myself.”
In Eger’s world, there is no forgiveness without rage. Whatever imprisons our minds, we must go through the valley of the shadow of death and not become stuck there. She explains: “Forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself, not allowing the past to rule your life. While suffering is inevitable and universal, we can always choose how we respond… We can choose to be our own jailors, or we can choose to be free.”
She continues, “It may seem wrong to call anything that came out of the death camps a gift. I am here to tell you that the worst prison is not the one the Nazis put me in. The worst prison is the one I built for myself.”
Dancing for Mengele
Surprisingly, Eger says she found God in Auschwitz. “My God was with me. I look at Auschwitz as an opportunity to discover my inner resources and to become closer and closer to my God.”
The elegant La Jolla psychologist credits God with transforming her hatred into pity, to helping her feel sorry for the guards and view them as the actual prisoners. “They were born to be beautiful and have joy and love and passion for life. But they were taught to see Jews as a cancer to society.”
Many decades later, a fellow ballerina validated Eger’s perspective. On May 4, 2019, the 74th anniversary of her liberation and a national day of remembrance in the Netherlands, Eger spoke at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Then she watched Igone de Jongh, the prima ballerina of the Dutch National Ballet, perform a piece inspired by Eger’s first night in Auschwitz when she danced for Mengele.
Calling the Dutch ballet one of the most cherished experiences of her life, Eger was awed by the depiction of beauty and transcendence – in hell. Mengele appeared to be a hungry ghost, sad and empty, trapped by his need for power and control.
Flowers from Igone de Jongh
At the end, de Jongh descended from the stage and walked directly to Eger. With tears in her eyes, the ballerina embraced the Holocaust survivor and gave her a huge bouquet. The audience roared with applause and a standing ovation.
Eger continues to dance through life, happy to perform her signature ballet high kick after her talks. She will celebrate her 93rd birthday Sept. 29. “I will never retire,” she declares. “The meaning in life is when you can be useful. The only way I think I survived is that I can serve others.”
(15) Dumitrache Ioan, September 28, 2020 6:29 PM
Doamne...
Ce se poate comenta ? Nimic...părerea mea. Lacrimile calde și sărate de pe obrajii oricui citește despre viața acestor inocenți cu sfîrșitul lor tragic, spun tot. Ce am citi aici despre Eger, este ca un medicament pentru suflet. Uneori, am senzația că și eu am fost ... acolo...in infernul, pe care nu vreau să îl numesc. Mulțumesc pentru sfaturi, Eger.
(14) Linda Gannon, September 25, 2020 6:19 PM
The Choice
Excellent article of an incredible woman. Her book The Choice is excellent. Highly recommend it. If you get a chance to hear her speak, do it. Her words will move you. May G-d continue to bless her!
(13) Chris Anoruo, September 25, 2020 9:56 AM
Thank you Eger
This is a beautiful peace. “The worst prison is the one you built for yourself!”
(12) Anonymous, September 24, 2020 9:27 PM
Edith Eger - truly inspiring
Gd bless Edith Eger. May she live until 120 and continue to inspire people, to help them. Her words are truly meaningful. One cannot even imagine what she went through.
Anonymous, September 25, 2020 1:10 PM
Amen
(11) Anne Diedens, September 24, 2020 1:59 PM
Un témoignage s'amour
Je sous d' autant plus touchée par le témoignage de Eger que ma tante avait 22 ans, lorsqu'elle a fait cette même marche de la mort d'Auschwitz à Mauthausen . Peut être se connaissaient-elles? Ma tante aussi survécut et vécut encore de longues années . Toutes deux ont fait face à l' abominable Mengele qui disait à ma tante: "De beaux yeux comme cela ne rentreront pas en Belgique!" . Par delà les années , mon admiration et ma tendresse vont à Eger qui a par son amour vaincu la mort.
(10) Anonymous, September 24, 2020 10:50 AM
In a World of Despare A beautiful Flower Arises Amidst the Rubble
This is an amazing article that shows the strength that is possible even in adversity of great Magnitudes. B.L.O.
(9) EvaEngel, September 24, 2020 5:47 AM
My time with you in Sydney1985 I will never forget
I quote you so often and would love to communicate With you
It is wonderful that your mind and you are still giving so much value to so Much that is needed in the world to day
Keep well
How can I speak to you? Eva Engel Sydney
(8) rena groot, September 24, 2020 4:14 AM
Beautiful
What a beautiful story...of how the human spirit transcended the horror of Auschwitz. How beautiful that in the horror of Hell Egar found the God of Heaven.
(7) irwin pollack, September 24, 2020 1:54 AM
Eger provides a beautiful way to understand her concept of 'stretch' . Perhaps Trump could benefit by adopting the concept .
(6) Anonymous, September 24, 2020 12:34 AM
Thank you for sharing your experiences!!!! I will look for your book.
(5) Kendra Schwartz, September 23, 2020 10:30 PM
Really nice story!
Very incredible story. To have suffered so much and to then be able to see the man who oppressed and caused terror to you to be a vacant empty ghost and the true prisoner is power. That the Nazis were not able to experience love, joy or what their life could truly be because they were about causing pain.
(4) Anonymous, September 23, 2020 4:06 PM
technical detail
An amazing article, thank you. One small technical issue - having been there, I know that the Arbeit Macht Frei sign is at the original Auschwitz I site. Editke was unquestionably sent to the Birkenau/Auschwitz II extermination camp located about 3 km away, where the Hungarian deportees were sent and the huge crematoria were. Nobody sent to Birkenau would have seen the Arbeit Macht Frei sign.
Ronda Robinson, September 23, 2020 6:36 PM
Thank you
Dr. Eger says they were initially sent to the main camp, sorted by age and gender there, and then the women were taken to Birkenau.
Anonymous, September 23, 2020 7:52 PM
Thank you !
Thank you so much for verifying that detail with her! It's shocking that, notwithstanding the relentless pressure to kill as many Hungarian Jews as possible before the Allied victory that by then was inevitable, the Nazis would have decided to process the transport in one location and then move those selected for death to the extermination camp, which is quite inefficient. Maybe there were too many trains in Birkenau on that day, because of the Nazis' zeal to kill Jews, and that the selection had to be done elsewhere. But if that were the case, standard Nazi practice was to keep a fully loaded train on an idle track for a couple of days until the time was right for them. They certainly didn't care about the people starving and dying on the train.
(3) Mirzoeff, September 23, 2020 4:02 PM
Dear Mrs Eger Wish You Happy Birthday Till 120 Years & What You Passed An Emotional Heart Breaking Golden Words Story. In 1948 Partition Of Israel Muslims Attacked Our House ( In Peshawar ) My Mother Was Killed My Father Was Badly Injured Near To Death, Only Hashem Miraculously Saved Him Being Religious To Take Care Of His 6 Small Children Ages 18-2 Years
& Passed Away At The Age Of 90 Years
(2) David Sabghir, September 23, 2020 3:22 PM
What's Not To Cry
Reminds me of another survivor, Viktor Frankl's Logotherapy. Life has meaning when one lives to perform for others.
Happy Birthday to a Winner: Dr. Edith Eger!
(1) Linda Calderon, September 23, 2020 3:09 PM
Forgiveness is her name
The most beautiful article. I cried all the way through but it has brought me to the decision to purchase her book. Thank you for sharing this.