Book Review
The Choice by Edith Eger
Genre: Autobiography
It’s 1944 and sixteen-year-old ballerina Edith Eger is sent to Auschwitz. Separated from her parents on arrival, she endures unimaginable experiences, including being made to dance for the infamous Josef Mengele. When the camp is finally liberated, she is pulled from a pile of bodies, barely alive.
The horrors of the Holocaust didn’t break Edith. In fact, they helped her learn to live again with a life-affirming strength and a truly remarkable resilience. The Choice is her unforgettable story. It shows that hope can flower in the most unlikely places.
Review
I genuinely don’t know how to start this review, and it’s difficult to describe this book without feeling like I’m not doing its author justice. Dr Eger shares her life in The Choice, granting the reader insight into her deepest feelings, into the most horrible and vulnerable moments of her life. She takes us back to her childhood, showing how her family’s religious background started to slowly influence her life as anti-semitism gained traction in Europe, and also what kind of family hers was. The first half of the book is about the year she spent in the hands of the Nazis, being deported to Auschwitz, and how her sister and she are sent on endless marches meant to kill them.
Many books about the Holocaust that I’ve read so far end with the liberation from the concentration camp, but for The Choice, it’s only a turning point. Dr Eger shows us how her life after the war looked like, how she tried to run away from what had happened to her, from the loss of her parents. Her trauma still influences her decades later, and she takes us on the journey of her personal healing that lasted just as long.
It’s a very intimate insight and in the end, the message of this book is very positive. Life is now. I’m fascinated by Dr Eger’s strength and I think everyone should read this book and see for themselves what this inspirational woman has to teach us.
