Dr Edith Eagers life story revolves around something her mother told her as a child. “ “Just remember,” she says, “no one can take away from you what you’ve put in your mind.” ” The book chronicles her life journey which is expressed through bold and lucid transparency. Her mantra is to take care of what is happening on the inside regardless of what his happening on the outside. Yet, it is what happened to her outside, which makes this a soul churning and exhilarating read.
Struggles accompanied Dr Eager from her early childhood when she had to deal with her cross-eye, shattered expectation of her mother who desperately wanted to have a boy and being compared her extremely beautiful and talented elder sisters. She overcame all of these and created her own space to become leading ballet dancer and gymnast. This space though was torn apart when she was expelled form the Hungarian gymnastic team because of her Jewish heritage and this was just a beginning of her suffering. The ugly, beastly cruel storm that smothered humanity with its fangs of anti-Semitism also robbed Edith of everything she had. Her first love, his romance, her house her childhood, her father, her mother and her identity were clawed away from her by the greatest stigma on humanity. Yet her dignity prevailed, even when she was forced to dance in her camp for the entertainment of Dr Mengele the evil, which took her mother away from her. She endured all by holding on to the voice inside her which told her, if you survive today tomorrow you will be free and by holding on to her only link to reality, her sister Magda. The two sisters clung on to each other often sacrificing their individual freedom to face the wrath of Auschwitz and Nazi atrocities and survive to tell their story.
The book also tells the story of her post freedom liberation to America, her domestic struggles and conquests to become a psychologist. She recounts how she faced her own demons while dealing with her patients and how she conquered them. While helping her patients cope with violence, racism and pain she constantly challenged her own beliefs, of anger bigotry and suffering. When the moment presented itself she took up her own challenge to visit Kehlsteinhaus (eagles nest) the place from where Hitler had orchestrated the crimes against humanity and against millions of Edith Eagers. She stood on the rubbles left of the nest and forgave Hitler thus announcing victory of humanity over evil, of Dr Edith Eager over Adolf Hitler. However, the most poignant moment of the book is when she visits Auschwitz and relives the dreaded moment in the line when Angel of death Dr Mengele pointed her mother towards the line of death but pushed her to the line that would survive. Going back to that moment she forgave herself for surviving but not being able to save her mother, thus letting go of the burden of guilt that she carried for all the years after her liberation from the camp. The exclamation mark in her life is that she ultimately worked with military as a psychotherapist to treat PTSD and helped in treating ravages of the wars similar to the war that had ravaged her.
Out of all the cases she has described the two cases, which summarise the essence is of two women who came to her on the same day. One who was in huge pain because her son was suffering from a deadly disease and the other was in pain because the color of her new car did not look good. As disparate the situation of these two women was, their pain still was equally intense. Ultimately, how we respond to a situation depends on our mind and our thoughts, which stem from our core beliefs. Indeed, ““We don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know what’s going to happen, but no one can take away from you what you put in your own mind.”
This book illuminates the path for your soul to conquer suffering, like none other.
