What does one do after experiencing an event so traumatic, so mind-numbing that breathing hardly seems feasible? How does one live with themselves if they come out of a situation and someone else doesn’t, if their life was saved while another’s was crushed, buried under an ever-growing pile of bodies?

In her book The Choice, Edith (Edie) Eva Eger had to answer those questions. When she was rescued by American soldiers in 1945, with a broken back and severe nutritional deficiency from the horrors of Auschwitz, she had to ask herself, “What next?”

Edie was a happy child, even if she felt like a misfit in her family. She found solace in dance, in gymnastics. She prided herself in her strong, lean body, her taut muscles. Her hopes were destroyed when she was asked to step away from her well-deserved spot on a team training for the Olympics. Why? She was Jewish. Hitler’s doctrines spread through Europe like the plague, either infecting people or subjecting them to extreme devastation.

At 16 years of age, Edie and her mother, father, and sister were torn from their home and packed into a train of other Jews, shipped off to labor camps. Her mother was killed, shoved into the gas chambers for a quick shower. Edie’s suffering was not so quick. She slowly starved and worked herself to near death. She watched a woman give birth with her legs tied shut, writhing in agony. She watched babies being used as target practice, thrown into the air while sobbing mothers watched. She desperately awaited the day of liberation, the day her relief would overwhelm her sorrow.

And then it came. Weighing barely 70 pounds, shattered physically, mentally, and emotionally, she and her sister were lifted out of the piles of rotting corpses. Then what?

She asked herself, “Why me? Why did I survive?”

Why was it her, of millions upon millions of Jews that were imprisoned, that did not die of the cruelty of the Nazis? She lived with that heavy guilt, that regret, that sorrow for years. Years. The struggle did not end when she was carried out of those haunted gates.

Even after she was able to gain weight back, find a husband who shared the same tragedy, reunite with her remaining family, her sisters, she was not okay. She was not able to escape from her past no matter how far and fast she ran.

She was then given the opportunity to get to America. She thought that would solve all her problems… finally, the American Dream would get her out of Europe, far enough away from the nightmare that she would feel better. She didn’t feel better. She was like a fish out of water, a fish who couldn’t find her place in the world.

Her story is incredible. From a child athlete, to a victim of the Holocaust, to a psychologist helping people with issues ranging from PTSD to cancer, from anorexia to marriage problems, she describes our choice.

“We can choose what the horror teaches us. To become bitter in our grief and fear. Hostile. Paralyzed. Or to hold on to the childlike part of us, the lively and curious part, the part that is innocent.”

It is not possible to live a life free from struggle, from loss, from difficulty. We cannot avoid it. Pain is a part of life, it is a part of humanity. What we can control is how we deal with pain. How we face it. How we embrace it. How we grow from it.

She describes how she discovered her ability to choose, her ability to do more than succumb to Hitler, to let him win. She chose not to be a victim.

“Victimhood comes from the inside, no one can make you a victim but you. We become victims not because of what happens to us but when we choose to hold onto our victimization.”

In her career as a psychologist, she was often asked to speak to soldiers dealing with PTSD, depression. She was once asked to speak at Hitler’s old headquarters. Emotions flooded into her. What was she supposed to do? How could she go to that place? There was no clear answer.

Eventually, Edie decided. She needed to face her fears, to face Hitler. When there, she decided to go for a walk, alone, to see the old house where he had killed himself. She stood, gazing at that house, thinking. Overwhelmed. She took off her shoes, standing on the cold ground, barefoot. And she forgave.

Not everyone can do that. I couldn’t. She released the hate, the anger, the grief. And she could breathe again.

The book isn’t for people of younger ages, or those with weak stomachs. Some of the imagery is graphic, horrifying. But the message she spreads can and does apply to everyone, Eva’s positive outlook on life is something everyone can learn from. Especially during the uncertainty revolving around a global pandemic.

Dr. Edith Eva Eger is a phenomenal person, a sublime writer, and a spectacular psychologist. Her seemingly simple practices and honest style of description convey her raw emotion, her true account of the horrors she experienced. Not only that, but she tells of how she questioned her life, how she wondered what “should” have happened, and what will happen next. She tells how she recovered, and how she repurposed her life into one of service and of kindness, one meant to teach and to help.

She says, “I would love to help you experience freedom from the past, freedom from failures and fears, freedom from anger and mistakes, freedom from regret and unresolved grief—and the freedom to enjoy the full, rich feast of life. We cannot choose to have a life free of hurt. But we can choose to be free, to escape the past, no matter what hurt befalls us, and to embrace the possible.”

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3682674437?book_show_action=false