When Edith Eva Eger released her best-selling memoir “The Choice: Embrace the Possible” in 2017, she became known as “the Anne Frank who didn’t die.” She was about the same age as the famous diarist when Germany invaded Poland. The invasion marked the start of World War II and a chain of events that led to the round-up of European Jews. Both teens ended up in Auschwitz, and both were accompanied by their sisters.
Fortunately for Eger, she survived and eventually made her way to America to start a new life. She became a psychologist, drawing on her own experiences to help her patients work through issues. She married an accountant and raised three children with him. After becoming a grandfather, her husband quipped: “Three generations—that’s the best revenge [on] Hitler.”
Her story has been likened to another equally famous Shoah (Holocaust) memoir: Viktor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” Together, these two works create a potent understanding of the human psyche and behavior when faced with seemingly insurmountable situations. Yet the two works present different perspectives.
Author Edith Eva Eger. Jordan Engle
“The Choice” was on the New York Times Bestseller list and won the National Jewish Book Club award. “The Ballerina of Auschwitz” is the Young Adult (YA) version of her memoir, released this year on her 97th birthday. This version tells her story through the eyes of teenage Edie.
A Grand Jeté in Her Mind
In her early years, Edie Elefánt, a Hungarian Jew, was a double minority because her hometown of Kassa was part of Czechoslovakia when she was born.As the youngest of three sisters, Edie always lived in the shadow of her musically talented older sisters: Magda the pianist and Klara the violin prodigy. Although Edie was considered the brains of the family, her mother favored the older girls.
Edie found her escape through ballet. When she danced, she became whoever she envisioned herself to be. Edie, also a gymnast, even started training for the Olympic team, until her coach sadly told her that she will have to give up her spot. It was 1940, a year after Hitler invaded Poland.
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Hungary wasn’t spared from the Nazi stranglehold. The Elefánt family heard of Jews taken away to work camps, and, yet, they didn’t act on opportunities to flee.
Face to Face With Death
The entrance to the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau with the lettering "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work makes you free"), in Oswiecim, Poland, on Jan. 25, 2015. Joël Saget /AFP via Getty Images
The day finally comes. Edie’s family is taken to Auschwitz, except for Klara, who is in Budapest at the time. There, they are separated by gender and then by age. Her mother ends up in a separate line where those older than 40 or younger than 14 are sent to their deaths. Edie is now alone with her oldest sister Magda.
Edie comes face-to-face with her mother’s murderer, the Angel of Death himself: Dr. Josef Mengele. He is searching the barracks for talented individuals to provide his entertainment. Edie, identified as a ballerina, is ordered to dance. Pre-arranged by Mengele is a camp orchestra, just outside, that plays “The Blue Danube” waltz. Edie finds herself dancing for Mengele. She knows she is performing before her executioner; she is dancing for her survival.
How she can keep her composure and dignity as she performs for a killer’s pleasure is mind-boggling. But as she bravely goes through her routine, she is reminded of what her mother once said to her: “No one can take away from you what you’ve put in your own mind.” And with that comes a revelation: She realizes that Mengele is a more pitiful creature than she is. “I am free in my mind, which he can never be” Edie says to herself. “He will always have to live with what he’s done.” Edie then says a silent prayer—not really for herself but for Mengele.
Edie will constantly be reminded of her mother’s words when her outside circumstances become too horrible to endure.
Insights Into True Faith
As Edie, Magda, and the rest of the young women learn to survive at camp, readers are exposed to more than the horrors of prison life and the subhuman conditions of the camps; they are also reminded that it’s easy to wallow in grief and despair. There are reports of young people throwing themselves at the electric fence for a quick end; they’ve lost all hope and faith.“I can’t believe in a God who would let this happen” is the general consensus among the girls. But Edie thinks otherwise. She thinks: “It isn’t God who is killing us in gas chambers, in ditches, on cliff sides. ... God doesn’t run the death camps.”
This clear insight in the midst of her hellish circumstances helps Edie soldier on, to encourage and support the other girls, and to keep her faith.
A (Mostly) YA Story
Edie’s story moves past the camps to what happens to her and her sister immediately after being rescued. Though not easy, the same inner strength and hope that saw Edie through her time at Auschwitz continues to help her navigate her new life.In her book’s introduction, she says that she hopes readers learn from her experience and think, “If she can do it, so can I!” She reiterates: “I offer you this book so that you can transcend victimhood and choose to dance through life. … I give you my story to empower you.”
It’s a counterargument to the victim culture pervasive among today’s youth and as good a reason as any for young people to grab a copy of this book. It’s history told and actually lived—making her story that much more powerful.
The publishers have touted the book as the YA edition of “The Choice,” recommending it for children ages 12 and up. Parents may need to read the book before passing it down to younger children. Certain scenes may be too disturbing for innocent minds, especially if they’re not used to reading about such horrors. In addition, this is a coming-of-age book, and although the camps weren’t ideal places to learn about the birds and the bees, that’s exactly what Edie had to do.
On the whole, Eger’s memoir shows the resilience of the human mind and spirit, the hopefulness that propels one to help others as well as themselves, and the transcendence of love over hate.
‘The Ballerina of Auschwitz’
By Edith Eva Eger
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, Oct. 1, 2024
Hardcover: 192 pages
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