Edith Eger

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Edith Eva (Edie) Eger (Košice, September 29, 1927) born to Hungarian Jewish parents, is a psychologist practicing in the United States. She is a Holocaust survivor and a specialist in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.[1]  Her memoirs entitled The Choice - Embrace the Possible, published in 2017, became an international bestseller.[2] Her second book, titled The Gift - 12 Lessons to Save Your Life was published in September 2020.

Biography[]

Edith Eger is the youngest daughter of Lajos and Ilona Elefánt, Jewish people from Hungary in what was at the time of her birth Czechoslovakia. Her father was a tailor.[3][1]

Eger's hometown, Košice, belonged to Hungary before June 1920 and after 1938 and was called Kassa during that time. Eger attended gymnasium high school and took ballet lessons. She was a member of the Hungarian Olympic gymnastics team.[4][5] In 1942 the Hungarian government enacted new anti-Jewish laws and she was removed from the gymnastics team. Her elder sister Clara was a violin player and was admitted to the Conservatory of Budapest. During the war Clara was hidden by her music teacher.[6] Her sister Magda was a pianist.

In March 1944, Eger was forced to live in the Košice ghetto with her parents and Magda. In April they were forced to stay in a brick factory with 12,000 other Jews for a month.[1] In May of that year they were deported to Auschwitz. When she was selected for the gas chamber, she was separated from her mother by Josef Mengele. Her mother died in the gas chamber. In her memoirs, Eger relates that the same evening Mengele made her dance for him in her barracks.[5] As a "thank you", she received a loaf of bread that she shared with other girls.[7]

According to her memoirs, Eger stayed in various camps, including Mauthausen.[6] The Nazis evacuated Mauthausen and other concentration camps as the Americans and Russians approached.[1] Eger was sent on a death march with her sister Magda to the Gunskirchen concentration camp,[8] a distance of about 55 kilometers. When she couldn't walk further due to exhaustion, one of the girls with whom she had shared Mengele's bread recognized her and carried her onward together with Magda.[7] Conditions in Gunskirchen were so bad that Eger had to eat grass to survive, while other prisoners turned to cannibalism.[9] When the U.S. military liberated the camp in May 1945, according to Eger, she was left for dead among a number of dead bodies. A soldier is said to have rescued her after seeing her hand move. The soldier quickly sought medical attention and saved her life. She weighed 32 kilograms at the time, and had a broken back, typhoid fever, pneumonia, and pleurisy.[10][1]

After the war[]

Edith and Magda recovered in American field hospitals and returned to Kassa where they found their sister Clara. Their parents and Edith's fiancée Eric did not survive Auschwitz. She married Béla (Albert) Éger, whom she met in the hospital.[1] He was also a Jewish survivor who had joined the partisans during the war. In 1949, after threats from the communists, they fled together with their daughter to the United States. There she suffered from her war trauma and survivor guilt, and did not want to talk about the war with her three children.[1]

Eger befriended Viktor Frankl, went into therapy, and received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Texas at El Paso in 1978. She also received her license to practise as a psychologist.[4] She opened a therapy clinic in La Jolla, California and was appointed to the faculty at the University of California, San Diego.

In 1990, Eger returned to Auschwitz to face her repressed emotions. At the urging of Philip Zimbardo, she published her experiences in her first book The Choice in 2017.[10]

In her work as a psychologist, Eger helps her clients to free themselves from their own thoughts, and helps them to ultimately choose freedom. The Choice became a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller.[11][12] In her second book The Gift (2020) she encourages the reader to change the thoughts that, according to Eger, imprison us and the destructive behaviors that would hinder us. What happens to us in life is not the most important thing in the end, she says. Rather, the most important thing is what we do with our lives.

Eger has appeared on CNN and the Oprah Winfrey Show.[7]

Family[]

In the US, the Eger family had two more children. Their daughter Marianne is married to Robert Engle, Nobel laureate in economics.[8] Béla Eger died in 1993.[13]

Publications[]

  • The Choice - Embrace the Possible. Scribner, 2017, ISBN 9781501130786
  • The Gift - 12 Lessons to Save Your Life. Ebury Publishing, 2020, ISBN 9781846046278

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g "Mind power in Auschwitz – and healing decades later". The Guardian. 2018-09-02. Retrieved 2020-11-08.
  2. ^ "How to Break Free From Your Mental Prisons, With Psychologist Dr. Edith Eger". Lifehacker Australia. 2020-10-05. Retrieved 2020-11-07.
  3. ^ Marci Jenkins (14 August 1992). "Oral history interview with Edith Eva Eger". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 9 November 2020.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b "Holocaust-overlevende Edith Eger vertelt over donkere tijd | KRO-NCRV". www.kro-ncrv.nl (in Dutch). Retrieved 2020-11-07.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b Lori Gottlieb (6 October 2017). "What a Survivor of Auschwitz Learned From the Trauma of Others". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 November 2020.
  6. ^ Jump up to: a b "Eger, Dr. Edith". El Paso Holocaust Museum. Retrieved 6 November 2020.
  7. ^ Jump up to: a b c "Oprah's SuperSoul conversations:Dr. Eith Eva Eger - The Choice". YouTube. 30 August 2020. Retrieved 8 November 2020.
  8. ^ Jump up to: a b Antoinette Scheulderman (2017). "De ballerina van Auschwitz". de Volkskrant Kijk Verder (in Dutch). Retrieved 6 November 2020.
  9. ^ "Dr. Edith Eger: 'A dialogue with Edie'". De School voor Transitie. May 2019. Retrieved 6 November 2020.
  10. ^ Jump up to: a b Ykje Vriesinga (9 October 2020). "Auschwitz-overlevende Edith Eger: 'Mijn wens is gelukkig te sterven'". NRC Handelsblad (in Dutch). Retrieved 6 November 2020.
  11. ^ Melissa Simon (1 September 2020). "NYT Bestselling Author and Holocaust Survivor Edith Eger on Her Self-Help Book 'The Gift'". Jewish Journal. Retrieved 6 November 2020.
  12. ^ "The Sunday Times Bestsellers, February 17". The Sunday Times. 17 February 2019. Retrieved 8 November 2020.
  13. ^ "Eger, Albert". El Paso Holocaust Museum. Retrieved 19 December 2020.
Retrieved from ""