Book Review: The Choice: Embrace the Impossible by Edith Eva Eger

Edith Eva Eger’s memoir was recommended to me by my mother who told me that I was going to love it, and I was skeptical though I had no real reason to be. But my Mom was right. 

The book is more or less divided into 4 parts: her childhood surviving the Holocaust, journeying to America afterward, what she learned about overcoming psychological struggles as a survivor of trauma, and her career as a psychologist (delving more into patient stories and therapeutic tactics). I am drawn toward historical writing, whether fiction or non, more than I am self-help, so naturally the first part was more compelling for me. But the entire memoir was incredibly strong, very well-written, and psychologically insightful. I understand the intention behind including both parts; Eger wanted not only to relate the truth of the Holocaust and the human capacity for depravity and pain as many WW2 memoirs do, but to prove that humans can overcome that depravity and pain and to lend us therapeutic tools we might use in our own lives.

I admire Edith Eva Eger so much. Her optimism and benevolent outlook even towards her oppressors is truly inspiring. I’m not sure how much her outlook was influenced by retrospective hindsight bias and her years of training her brain to be psychologically tuned, but it’s an incredibly powerful story and display of strength of character regardless. Eger displays moments of bravery such as using her gymnastic background to do cartwheels to distract a guard so her sister Magda can join her in the same selection line, or when she had to dance as entertainment for the notorious Dr. Mengele. As Eger describes this dance, she writes, 

“I will never know what miracle of grace allows me this insight. It will save my life many times, even after the horror is over. I can see that Dr. Mengele, the seasoned killer who just this morning murdered my mother, is more pitiful than me. I am free in my mind, which he can never be. He will always have to live with what he’s done. He is more a prisoner than I am. As I close my routine with a final graceful split, I pray, but it isn’t myself I pray for. I pray for him. I pray, for his sake, that he won’t have the need to kill me.”

How Eger obtains the power of insight to feel compassion over anger and fear in this moment is seriously a “miracle of grace,” as she calls it. 

Eger is uniquely qualified to speak on physical imprisonment vs mental imprisonment, which we have control over, and how to take back control. I appreciated her describing her tactics as a therapist, how she communicates through body language, how she encourages her patients to open up, and what she takes note of that helps her cater the therapy to that specific patient. 

In an otherwise chronologically straightforward memoir, Eger even managed to add a twist at the end of the book, which I didn’t take as a literary manipulation of an otherwise authentic account, but as a testament to what she was most afraid to admit even to this day, what haunts her as her most devastating regret. The guilt she had to experience and overcome is too profound for me to conceptualize, and I feel a sort of pride for this older woman I’ve never met.