Edith Eger

Edith Eger

Edith Eger was born on September 29th, 1927 and is currently 98 years old. Edith Eger was born in Kosice, Slovakia. Eger attended The University of Texas at El Paso where she received a PhD in Clinical Psychology.

Edith Eger is best known as a specialist in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, a Holocaust survivor, and a psychologist. She is also known for her bestselling memoir The Choice.

She was still in her teens when she and her parents were sent to the heinous death camp known as Auschwitz. While her parents died in the gas chambers, Edith and her sister managed to survive through their extraordinary bravery.

As the war was coming to an end, Edith Eger and other prisoners were transferred to Austria. In 1945, an American soldier thought one of the bodies beside the road was moving and called for medical help, and this was how Eger was rescued from certain death.

Following the war, Edith became a resident of Czechoslovakia, where she got married before moving to the US in 1949.
She would go on to become an author in the US, in addition to becoming a member of several professional organizations. Eger also runs a La Jolla, California-based clinical practice and is a professor at the University of California.

Eger has been in many television programs and was featured in a Dutch National Television documentary. She has also been invited to speak at numerous international and US engagements.

In her memoir The Choice, Edith Eger tells her story set in 1944, where she was sent to Auschwitz alongside her family.

Immediately after they arrived, she was separated from her parents and then subjected to unimaginable humiliations. When the camp was finally liberated, she was rescued and saved from death when a soldier dragged her out of a pile of bodies.

Despite how much she suffered, she was not broken by the Holocaust, but instead, it made her more resilient and gave her new life-affirming strength.

Three years later, Edith Eger published the work The Gift, in which she provides a guide on how just about anyone can break free from their mental prison.

She draws from her experiences as a psychologist and time in a Holocaust concentration camp to address avoidance, fear, shame, grief, guilt, and anger. She also includes family recipes to demonstrate how food can lead to a renewed sense of living, connection, and love.

In 2024, she published The Ballerina of Auschwitz, in which she tells of her dream of competing in the Olympics since she was a gifted gymnast and dancer.

Since it was 1943, it was a time of great danger for Jews, and things changed drastically when she and her family were sent to Auschwitz. Separated from Eric, her first love, she endures brutality, starvation, and humiliation to survive through sheer determination.

When the war ends, she is haunted by survivor's guilt and grief, but learns then learns that she cannot change the past and would rather choose to move forward and find new meaning.

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Edith Eger: F.A.Q