Reviews
I found this book compelling and emotional, sweet and sad, I could empathise with the sisterhood contexts. Overall a nice journey with the author into her inner life and into myself as well.
Amazing memoir of a holocaust survivor! Her story of survival + life after, leading into her work as a psychologist is a pure masterpiece!
Wow, what a story. Dr. Eger transforms her painful life experiences into wisdom, and shares with us the keys she uses to get out of the prison in our minds. It is an incredibly touching story, but beyond her own life story Dr Eger also shares stories of helping her patients through their own challenges. She doesn't want us to just be inspired by her story, she wants us to realize that we can also choose to free ourselves.
I could not put this book down. It is one of the most powerful books I've ever read. On one part, it is heartbreaking what she and her family had to go through, and how horrible people can be. On the other, it is a truly inspiring story about the choices we make in life and about the thoughts we put in our heads. With only one thought we can influence our lives in profound ways. It can be a difference between life and death. Between going forward and giving up. Love and hate. No matter what stage are you in your life, give it a read, as it will be life-changing!
I loved this book. I had a hard time putting it down, she’s so optimistic and has an answer for all of her struggles. Her relationships with her mother and siblings were so interesting. I’m happy she wrote this book! History was not my favorite subject so I felt like I was learning something with every turn of the page.
This makes me want to read Man’s Search for Meaning again. I enjoyed this book but not as much as I remember being inspired by Frankl. I will remember the distinction she makes between “reacting” and “responding”. I was also struck by the connection between her description of finding the possible or good path forward regardless of the circumstance and the more explicitly religious books I’ve read recently. This book is not explicitly religious in any way, but I found it reinforcing my own beliefs which happen to be Catholic.
This is much more than a firsthand account of what happened to a 16 year-old Jewish girl in Hungary, her parents, and sisters immediately before, during, and (for some of them) after the Holocaust. Dayenu - it would have been enough - had it done no more than tell that painful, true story. At first I thought it was the female version of Viktor Frankel’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” But Dr. Eger has taken her experience and shown us how personal choice is the way forward. Her life in America, her determination to succeed — to prove herself worthy of having survived while so many others were killed — is both gut-wrenching and inspirational. Dayenu. Later as a practicing psychiatrist, Dr. Eger describes her encounter with a new patient: a hate-filled neo-Nazi in a brown shirt and heavy boots. Her anguished reaction, and subsequent decision (no spoilers!), makes this a particularly meaningful and important contribution to combatting the current increase in white supremacy. The audiobook is wonderfully brought to life by the noted actress Tovah Feldshuh. A moving performance of the story of a woman whose long life and many contributions have left an indelible mark. Highly recommended.
What a beautiful, life-affirming book. Can't believe she wrote this when she was ninety. I found myself completely engrossed in Edith's story of surviving in Auschwitz and then later building a new life. This book forces you to look deep within, provokes you to think, to feel everything you don't want to, and then... slowly heals you. I simply could not stop reading this. Her stories are going to stay with me for days, possibly years.
"We don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but no one can take away from you what you put in your own mind." A young girl who is forced to dance for none other than Mengele, takes us on a journey through life. This book is an anthem to freedom....READ IT!
Have always been so so interested in ww2 and especially Jew's experiences in the camps and this book was amazing amazing. Also the fact that she was a ballerina really connected with me as a parallel to my priveliged life.
It took me months to read this book, not because it was badly written or boring, but because it hurt so much. It is split into to section and my god, did I cry during the first half of the book. If you have the opportunity, read this. But read it and ponder it. Don't rush thru it, but let the story sit down in the room with you and share the space. It is really something special.
I had such a strong connection to this book. I want to say I loved it, but that’s not the right word since I’m sad she had the material to write it. “I appreciated it” seems too minimal for my feelings. I’ll be interested to discuss (in my book club) what word in the English language can be used to describe everyone’s feelings towards this book. It’s complicated- it’s like a new word needs to be created.
I cannot describe how much I have liked and been moved by this book. A moving story of healing and overcoming. Whoever is lucky enough to read this book will learn about life, pain and overcoming
Highlights
But I wasn't a prisoner anymore. I could see my sister's prison at work, hear her guilt and grief clawing through the blame she threw at me and Magda. And I could choose my own freedom. I could name my own feelings, of rage, worthlessness, sorrow, regret, I could let them swirl, let them rise and fall, let them pass. And I could risk letting go of the need to punish myself for having lived. I could release my guilt and reclaim my whole pure self.
There is the wound. And there is what comes out of it. I went back to Auschwitz searching for the feel of death so that I could finally exorcise it. What I found was my inner truth, the self I wanted to reclaim, my strength and my innocence.
Time doesn't heal. It's what you do with the time. Healing is possible when we choose to take responsibility, when we choose to take risks, and finally, when we choose to release the wound, to let go of the past or the grief.
That's why I'm anxious. That's why I'm sad. That's why I can't risk going to Germany. It's not that I'm wrong to feel anxious and sad and afraid. It's not that there isn't real trauma at the core of my life. And it's not that Hitler and Mengele and every other perpetrator of violence or cruelty shouldn't be held accountable for the harm they cause. But if I stay on the seesaw, I am holding the past responsible for what I choose to do now.
But when I tell Béla that I have decided to decline the invitation, he grabs my shoulder. "If you don't go to Germany," he says, "then Hitler won the war."
Reading this stirred so much emotion in me. I just can't imagine what it must be like to feel the pressure of going back to a place that forces you to face trauma in your past like this.
But from this moment on, I understood that feelings, no matter how powerful, aren't fatal. And they are temporary. Suppressing the feelings only makes it harder to let them go. Expression is the opposite of depression.
Expression is the opposite of depression.
Today I have been assigned two new patients, both Vietnam veter- ans, both paraplegics. They have the same diagnosis (lower T-injury of the spinal cord), the same prognosis (compromised fertility and sexual function, unlikely to walk again, good control of hands and trunk). On my way to see them, I am unaware that one of them will have a life-changing effect on me. I meet Tom first. He is lying on his bed, curled up in a fetal position, cursing God and country. He seems imprisoned-by his injured body, by his misery, by his rage.
When I go to the other vet's room, I find Chuck out of bed and sitting in his wheelchair. "It's interesting," he says. "I've been given a second chance in life. Isn't it amazing?" He is brimming over with a sense of discovery and possibility. "I sit in this wheelchair, and I go out on the lawn, out on the grounds, and the flowers are much closer. I can see my children's eyes."
Dr Eger goes on to say that we are all part Tom and part Chuck, the struggles are hard on us but they are also what can help us transform ourselves.
Nothing is gained if we close our eyes to wrong, if we give someone a pass, if we dismiss accountability. But as my fellow survivors taught me, you can live to avenge the past, or you can live to enrich the present. You can live in the prison of the past, or you can let the past be the springboard that helps you reach the life you want now
Seligman's experiments-which were done with dogs and unfortu nately preceded current protections against cruelty to animals-taught him about the concept he called "learned helplessness." When dogs who were given painful shocks were able to stop the shocks by pressing a lever, they learned quickly to stop the pain. And they were able, in subsequent experiments, to figure out how to escape painful shocks administered in a kennel cage by leaping over a small barrier. Dogs who hadn't been given a means to stop the pain, however, had learned the lesson that they were helpless against it. When they were put in a kennel cage and administered shocks, they ignored the route to escape and just lay down in the kennel and whimpered. From this Seligman concluded that when we feel we have no control over our circumstances, when we believe that nothing we do can alleviate our suffering or improve our lives, we stop taking action on our own behalf because we believe there is no point. This is what happened at the camps, when former inmates left through the gates only to return to prison, to sit vacantly, unsure what to do with their freedom now that it had finally come.
Good to remember. We all have different degrees of experiences in which we feel helpless. So when we try to tell someone to feel empowered, that they can do anything, that may simply not match their lived experiences. I see this a lot in the workplace. It takes a lot of changes and trials before this feeling of helplessness can be left behind, and it's very easy to reverse progress and fall back into helplessness and desperate when a single new experience takes agency out of someone's hands.
Survival is black and white, no "buts" can intrude when you are fighting for your life. Now the "buts" come rushing in. We have bread to eat. Yes, but we are penniless. You are gaining weight. Yes, but my heart is heavy. You are alive. Yes, but my mother is dead.