EDITH EVA EGER

THE CHOICE: EMBRACE THE POSSIBLE
One of the few living Holocaust survivors to remember the horrors of the camps, Edie has chosen to forgive her captors and find joy in her life every day. Years after she was liberated from the concentration camps Edie went back to college to study psychology. She combines her clinical knowledge and her own experiences with trauma to help others who have experienced painful events large and small. Dr. Eger has counseled veterans suffering from PTSD, women who were abused, and many others who learned that they too, can choose to forgive, find resilience, and move forward. She is called on to train soldiers to endure the rigors of battle and to lecture on the power of love and healing.
The Choice weaves Eger’s personal story with case studies from her work as a psychologist. Her patients and their stories illustrate different phases of healing and show how people can choose to escape the prisons they construct in their minds and find freedom, regardless of circumstance. Eger’s story is an inspiration for everyone. And her message is powerful and important: “Your pain matters and is worth healing, you can choose to be joyful and free.” She is ninety and still dancing.

Eger isn’t the first Auschwitz survivor to write an account of the experience and introduce a way to move forward. In fact, it’s the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning,” handed to Eger by a fellow student more than two decades after liberation — at a time when Eger is still “pounded by loss” — that jump-starts her journey from “wearing a mask” to learning “how people heal.”
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“I can’t imagine a more important message for modern times. Eger’s book is a triumph, and should be read by all who care about both their inner freedom and the future of humanity. —LISA GOTTLIEB, New York Times Book Review