Forced to dance for Mengele at Auschwitz, she was called to help others heal

"For years, Edith Eger kept quiet, refusing to speak about the cattle cars or the death camps or the Nazi guard who broke her back. She never told her children how, at 16, she had been forced to dance for Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death," who had sent her mother to die earlier that day. Nor did she talk about the death march she endured near the end of the war, and the fact that she resorted to eating grass to survive at a time when others turned to cannibalism."

"She couldn't find the words. She didn't want anyone's pity. And she was determined, she said, "to be a source of life," not pain. But by the time she was in her early 50s, working as a clinical psychologist in the United States, she had begun to feel "like an impostor." Dr. Eger specialized in trauma, helping combat veterans, cancer patients and victims of abuse. Yet like so many of the people who came to her for help, she had not fully dealt with her past, which threatened to consume her even as she tried to move past it."

""I could not be a good guide to my patients or take them any further than I'd gone myself," she said. "For that, I had to go back to the lion's den and look at the place where my mother was murdered, where I was so close to death every day." In 1980, Dr. Eger willed herself to return to Auschwitz, where she visited the gas chambers and crematoria."

"She still vividly remembered the moment a more experienced inmate had gestured toward the chimney, after Dr. Eger had been separated from her mother and father, and told her, "You'd better talk about your parents in past tense. They're burning there." The trip marked the culmination of a long process in which Dr. Eger said she learned to let go of the shame and guilt that she felt as a survivor. Driven to speak out, partly as a way to honor her parents and other victims, she told her story in lecture halls and classrooms."

Edith Eger remained silent for years about her experiences in cattle cars, death camps, and abuse by a Nazi guard. She did not tell her children about being forced to dance for Josef Mengele, losing her mother, enduring a death march, or surviving by eating grass. She avoided pity and aimed to be a source of life rather than pain. In her early 50s, working as a clinical psychologist, she felt like an impostor because she had not fully processed her past. She returned to Auschwitz in 1980, visited gas chambers and crematoria, and confronted the moment she was told her parents were burning. The return helped her let go of shame and guilt, leading her to speak publicly and publish her memoir.

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