Edith Eger

Edith Eva Eger (, September 29, 1927 – April 27, 2026) was a Hungarian and American psychologist, specialist in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder, and Holocaust survivor. Her memoir entitled The Choice: Embrace the Possible, published in 2017, became an international bestseller. Her second book, titled The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life was published in September 2020.

Background Edith Eva Elefánt was born on September 29, 1927, in Košice, Czechoslovakia (present-day Slovakia), as the youngest daughter of Leopold (Lajos) Elefánt (1892–1944) (a tailor) and Helena (Ilona) Klein (1895–1944). In 1942 the Hungarian government enacted new anti-Jewish laws and she was removed from the gymnastics team. Her elder sister Klara was a violin player and was admitted to the Conservatory of Budapest. During the war Klara was hidden by her music teacher. Her sister Magda was a pianist. a distance of about . When she was unable to walk further due to exhaustion, one of the girls with whom she had shared Mengele's bread recognized her and carried her onward together with Magda. When the U.S. military liberated the camp in May 1945, according to Eger, she was left for dead among a number of dead bodies. A soldier is said to have rescued her after seeing her hand move. The soldier quickly sought medical attention and saved her life. She weighed at the time, and had a broken back, typhoid fever, pneumonia, and pleurisy. To be realistic and not idealistic, is also one of Eger's practices. Her deep faith in the camps encouraged her to pray for the guards that kept her in the camps, understanding that they were brainwashed. In her words: "People said where was God but I always say that God was with me", she says. "The Nazi guards were prisoners too. I prayed for them. I turned hatred into pity. I never told anyone that they were spending their days murdering people. What kind of life was that for them? They had been brainwashed. Their own youth had been taken away from them."

After the war Edith and Magda recovered in American field hospitals and returned to Kassa where they found their sister Klara. Their parents and Edith's fiancé Eric did not survive Auschwitz. When she was 19, she met and subsequently married Bela (Albert) Eger who had survived the war as a Jewish resistance fighter in the Slovak region.

In 1990, Eger returned to Auschwitz to face her repressed emotions. At the urging of Philip Zimbardo, she published her experiences in her first book in 2017. In her second book The Gift (2020) she encourages the reader to change the thoughts that, according to Eger, "imprison us and the destructive behaviors that would hinder us. What happens to us in life is not the most important thing in the end. ... Rather, the most important thing is what we do with our lives."

Eger appeared on CNN and The Oprah Winfrey Show. Bela Eger preceded her in death in 1993.

At the time of her death, Edith Eger was survived by her daughter Marianne Engle, a clinical psychologist married to Robert Engle, Nobel laureate in economics; Audrey Thompson, an executive coach; son John, a retired businessman; five grandchildren and ten great grandchildren.

Books The Choice: Embrace the Possible. Scribner, 2017. The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life. Ebury Publishing, 2020. A later edition is entitled The Gift: 14 Lessons to Save Your Life. The Ballerina of Auschwitz. Rider & Co., 2024.