The Choice: Embrace the Possible

The Choice: Embrace the Possible is a memoir published in 2017 by Dr. Edith Eva Eger, a psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor. After enduring anti-Semitism, cruelty, communism, and xenophobia, Eger integrates the lessons she learned to show how everyone can choose freedom and halt cycles of suffering. The memoir incorporates World War II history and psychological analysis into Eger’s story of survival, recovery, and joy. The Choice has received the Christopher Award, which acknowledges books, films, and TV that “affirm the highest value of the human spirit,” and the National Jewish Book Award. This guide refers to the 2018 Scribner paperback edition.

Summary

Edie (Elefánt) Eger’s story begins in her hometown of Kassa, Hungary, where her family remains blissfully ignorant of their impending deportation in 1944. The soldiers temporarily send the Elefánts to a brick factory, and they then board freight trains to Auschwitz. The soldiers take Edie’s father once they evacuate the train, then Edie’s mother at the selection line. Edie and her sister, Magda, quickly learn that their parents perished in the gas chambers. That evening, Dr. Josef Mengele—the camp physician who sent Edie’s mother to her death—enters Edie’s barracks and demands entertainers. Edie dances to “The Blue Danube” accompanied by the camp orchestra outside. That winter, the Nazis transfer Edie and Magda from Auschwitz. Soldiers force the girls to work in various factories around Germany; sometimes they take trains to different locations, and other times they march. Edie’s group marches from Germany to Mauthausen in Austria, where they wait in a grim selection line. Just before Edie reaches the front, soldiers divert the line; the remaining prisoners begin the Death March to Gunskirchen. Gunskirchen doesn’t have gas chambers, but many prisoners develop mortal diseases or starve. Americans liberate the camp in 1945, when soldiers discover Edie in a corpse pile—alive, but left for dead.

Edie and Magda regain their strength in a German home. Edie weighs 70 pounds and can’t walk, talk, or remember the full alphabet. Once the girls have enough strength to travel, they board trains to Košice—still their hometown, but renamed under Czech jurisdiction. They see their middle sister, Klara, as they are walking home. Klara was studying in Budapest when the Elefánts were deported, and she spent the war in hiding. Klara assumes the role of mother and nurse, caring particularly for Edie during her slow recovery. Edie’s doctor sends her to a tuberculosis hospital for a thorough lung exam, and there she meets a patient named Béla Eger.

After Edie returns home, she receives long letters and a visit from Béla. They marry in 1946, and Edie moves into Béla’s mansion in Prešov, Czechoslovakia. Edie soon gives birth to a daughter, Marianne. The Egers receive a letter saying that a relative of Béla’s who immigrated to the United States before the war has registered the Eger family for fast-track visa applications. However, their fortune is en route to Israel, where they soon plan to flee from central Europe’s growing communist presence. In May 1949, the government arrests Béla. Edie packs everything she can carry, bribes the police warden, and escapes with Béla. At the train station, the Egers narrowly avoid police detection, and they make it to Vienna. Edie decides to take Marianne to the United States instead of Israel, and at the last moment, Béla agrees to join.

Edie struggles acclimating to American culture in Baltimore, where Edie and Béla both have trouble finding stable jobs. The Egers eventually move west to El Paso, Texas, which is kinder to immigrants. Edie’s English improves, and she takes university-level psychology classes. Years later, Edie divorces Béla because she regrets marrying a man she never loved and feels he holds her back. Once Edie realizes their separation didn’t fix the source of her pain, they remarry. Edie begins a psychology doctoral program and later becomes certified in California, which has the most difficult state exam, meaning she can practice anywhere in the country. Edie reluctantly agrees to a speaking arrangement in Berchtesgaden, Germany—the same location where Hitler convened with his advisors. The trip is emotionally taxing, but Edie challenges herself to escape Hitler’s bondage. She decides to push her progress further and return to Auschwitz, where she finally forgives herself of the past.

Edie describes many different patients’ stories throughout the memoir. Through each, she demonstrates how people in all walks of life have their own mental prisons, and she explains how she walks them toward the path to inner freedom. In the memoir’s final documented speech, Edie stands on stage before a military unit with a familiar insignia—the Seventy-first Infantry that rescued her from Gunskirchen. Edie has broken the cycle of suffering, and she continues to empower others to do the same.