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Dr. Edith Eva Eger turned 97 last week. Happy birthday Edie. For those who don’t know Edie, she is a world-recognized psychologist and colleague of Viktor Frankl, who like Frankl, survived the Nazi death camps. She arrived at Auschwitz, with her sister and her parents, and then watched as her parents were ushered to the crematorium. Edie didn’t have a name for what enabled her to survive then, but it was a mindset—a mindset of hope, that she would survive, that this was only temporary. Improbably, Edie and her sister Marta were liberated—found by American G.I.s in a pile of dead bodies because Marta had a piece of metal to reflect the sun. Her bestselling book, The Choice: Embrace the Possible, tells this story—but more notably, it tells the story of what happened after, from learning how to walk and talk again, to surviving communists, to improbably again, being one of two Czech families granted a Visa to the United States, where she started over, doing piece work in a factory. Edie went back to school in her 40s, eventually earning her PhD, because she recognized she had to heal herself—that denial would destroy the life she fought so hard to save. The Choice: Embrace the Possible is an incredible book, and it’s now coming out in a YA version, called The Ballerina of Auschwitz, because before the camps, Edie was an Olympic hopeful gymnast and dancer—who Mengele used to make dance for him in the camps. In today’s conversation, Edie is joined by her grandson Jordan, who co-leads retreats with her to share some of the wisdom from her life. Let’s turn to the conversation now.
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
ELISE:
Hi, an honor to be with you.