10/10
Ninety-two-year-old Edith Eger has lived an unimaginably interesting life. Each stage of her life could be a book on its own. Eger is a Holocaust survivor who goes into detail in a few chapters the horrors of her and her sister Magda’s experience. The terror and hardship they endured is difficult for the reader to comprehend. Eger survived the Holocaust with her sister. As the Nazis tried to divide families, friends and dehumanise their victims, Edith describes her survival as being dependent on her sister and her sisters on her.
Few Holocaust books explain what happened when the war ended. I found this part of the book really interesting as even though the prisoners of the Nazis were now free, many were left with nothing to rebuild their lives with and nowhere to go. Central and Eastern Europe were in chaos with millions of displaced people, countries ruined by the war and borders being drawn and redrawn. Edith was one of three sisters. Magda and herself survived the Holocaust together while their middle sister Klara survived the war in a religious Christian girls school and by using her talents as a violinist. After liberation, the three sisters reunited and returned to their parents home where Klara cared for her sisters and used her music to provide for the three of them always with the dream of emigration and starting again. The author seldom inserts her age into the book, and it is easy to forget that Edith is 18 years-old at the end of the war. She has her sisters but lost everything else.
The sense of loss encapsulates the lost future. Before the Eger’s arrived at Auschwitz, Edith had a boyfriend called Eric whom she was in love with. During her time as a prisoner, she dreams of reuniting with Eric and marrying him. After the war, Edith is treated by a doctor who knew her family before she was captured. The doctor knew of Eric, and one day delivers dreaded news that Eric died in a camp, one day before it was liberated. Eger’s love of Eric and their precious moments together are brought up throughout the book. Eger shows how when survivors lost everything; they also lost their potential lives, all their hopes and dreams of their futures destroyed. Survivors had no choice but to begin again.
The rest of the book shows how Edith started her life again. The three Eger sisters married and emigrated. Edith and her husband, Bela, moved to the safety of America. They sacrificed his fortune for starting again in the US.
Holocaust survivors struggle to talk about their experiences of survival. These memories remain locked in their minds but never forgotten. Relived daily, at any incidental moment. Edith describes these flashbacks vividly and the mental jail she was locked in for decades. Bela survived the war hiding in the mountains. He never survived a Nazi camp, unlike Edith. She never spoke about her experiences with her children or family. She struggled with the gaping valley between her old life in Hungary with her parents and sisters and the life she made in America.
Edith trained in psychology and became a notable clinical psychologist. During her course, a fellow student recommended she read Man’s search for meaning by Viktor Frankl. Frankl wrote this famous short book about his experiences in Auschwitz and surviving the Holocaust as well as his pioneering branch of psychology called ‘logotherapy’. Frankl’s book affected Eger’s healing and showed her that there could be benefits of opening up about her experiences. Eger describes Frankl as one of her mentors and teachers, and I would have loved to have read more about her relationship with Frankl and how inspiring she found him.
There are many life lessons the reader can take away from this book, but crucially it is about the concept of choice. Edith’s mother used to say ‘no one can take away from you what you’ve put in your own mind.’ You could be in the worst conditions in a concentration camp, witness evil all around you but you could put the image of hope in your mind that tomorrow will be better than today. Anyone can be a victim, but victimhood is a choice. If we choose to be victims in our minds, then we let our oppressors win. This powerful concept has stuck with me, and the idea of choice is demonstrated throughout the book in various moments of Edith’s life.
This was one of the most influential books I have ever read and is even on Bill Gates book list for this summer. I recommend this book to everyone. You must add this one to your reading list. It is one of the best books about hope and optimism from a Holocaust survivor that lived an incredible life and shared her story with the world.
Edith Eger has a new book coming out this September called ‘The Gift 12 lessons to save your life’.
The Economics Book club 