Announcing the loss of our dear author and friend.
Dear Friends,
I am very sad to share with you that one of the great lights on our planet went out on April 27th: our beloved friend and author Edith Eger died at the age of ninety-eight.
I met Edie through Philip Zimbardo, who had run the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. After a lifetime of studying evil, Phil had started studying heroism, which he considered the ability to resist evil. He called me up and said, “You must help Edie tell her story. She’s the most heroic person I’ve ever met.”
I’m so grateful that I listened to him. Edie became a dear friend, mentor, and adopted second mother. When she wasn’t encouraging me to eat her chicken paprikash and seven-layer walnut cream torte, she was regaling me with Edeisms that would change my life and ultimately the lives of millions around the world. I had the incredible privilege of helping her share her extraordinary life story in three books: The Choice, The Ballerina of Auschwitz (an adaptation for young readers that adults will find just as moving), and The Gift, her practical guide to inner freedom.
Edie is known as the Anne Frank who survived—her life was the stuff of Hollywood movies (and will no doubt someday be made into one). At the age of 16, while training for the Hungarian Olympic gymnastic team, she was sent to Auschwitz with her family. In the boxcar on the way to the camp, her mother told her, “We do not know where we are going or what will happen to us, but just remember, no one can take away what you put in your mind.”
At the selection line, they were met by the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. He looked at Edie and asked, “Is this your mother or your sister?”
Her answer—her choice—would haunt her.
Later that night, she was forced to dance for him and would later be known around the world as the ballerina of Auschwitz.
In the camp, Edie quickly learned the rules of survival. On another day, when she and her sister were placed in separate selection lines, she knew that any attempt to switch might mean being shot. Nonetheless, she decided she needed to be with her sister, alive or dead. She cartwheeled from one line to the next. A guard raised his gun to shoot her, then lowered it and winked. Her gymnastic skill—and her chutzpah—had saved her life. By chance, the line she had joined her sister in was the line of survival. This story is a dramatic example of how sisterly love can save us, even in the most dire of circumstances
When the U.S Army liberated Gunskirchen camp (where Edie had been transported), she was found in a pile of bodies, barely alive, but her dramatic story did not end there. She went on to escape communist Hungary, surrender a fortune, and come to America penniless.
When Edie had finished telling me her stories, she said that sharing them was harder than surviving Auschwitz. In the concentration camp, she just had to survive. In sharing her memories, she had to feel everything that she had never let herself feel before.
Perhaps the most extraordinary story of all is how she confronted her own trauma and became a world-renowned therapist and author, helping people free themselves from the prisons of their own minds.
And her spirit and wisdom will live on for generations to come. The Choice is now one of the most celebrated and widely read Shoah memoirs, along with Night by Elie Wiesel (Elie and Edie were on the same transport to Auschwitz) and Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, who became Edie’s teacher and friend.
“We all have the capacity to choose when nothing helpful or nourishing is coming from the outside. That is precisely the moment when we have the possibility to discover who we really are. It’s not what happens to us that matters most. It’s what we do with our experiences. When we escape our mental prisons, we not only become free from what has held us back, but free to exercise our own free will.” – Edith Eva Eger, The Choice
Edie often kissed her four-year-old twin great-grandsons on the head. This was done in honor of her father, who kissed the family on Passover the night before they were taken away. It was a moving triumph to see her whole family alive and well at the memorial yesterday, and a reminder that love is stronger than hate.
If you’re so moved, join us in celebrating her life and legacy with a donation to the Edith Eger Foundation.
Doug & the IA Team—Alyssa, Elizabeth, Jordan, Kelly, Rebecca, Sarah, Shannon, Tom & Wenonah