The Choice: Embrace the Possible

The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Dr. Edith Eva Eger, 288 pages.

A compelling story that is a hybrid of sorts. Partly an account, a memoir of a holocaust survivor, and partly a self-help book,, an account from a successful therapist who shows her patients that they always have a choice, even if that choice is sometimes how they choose to deal with tragedy. Eger grew up in Kocise, Czechoslovakia (formerly, when her parents were younger, Kassa, Hungary), an ethnically Hungarian and Slovakian part of the world. Her father was a tailor, and her mother, while a good and kind woman, was haunted by the early death of her own mother. Eger's older sister Klara is a violin prodigy, and their oldest sister, Magda an extrovert. Eger felt that she lived in the shadow of her sisters when they were all young, before the war. Eger tells of how, when the Germans came, she and her parents and her sister Magda were sent to Auschwitz. Edith and her mother were separated by Mengele at the first selection when the infamous doctor asked if this was her mother or her sister. Fifteen year-old Edith answered without thinking that this was her mommy. Her mother is sent to the left, and Edith to the right. Edith is haunted by her answer for the rest of her life.
After the war, Eger heals slowly. Eventually, after reading Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, Eger changes course in her life, studies and earns a PhD in clinical psychology. In the second half of the book she talks about her family, how she and they found paths towards healing, this interspersed with accounts from her clinical practice, how she helped others on a path towards healing. An arresting and effective book.