Michelle: The worst thing that ever happened to you might be the key to your freedom. Mark: Whoa. Okay, that’s a huge claim. That sounds both terrifying and incredibly hopeful at the same time. Michelle: It’s a tough pill to swallow, but it’s the radical idea at the heart of one of the most powerful books we’ve ever read. It was written by a woman who survived hell on Earth. And that book is The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Dr. Edith Eva Eger. Mark: Who is just an incredible figure. Not only a Holocaust survivor from Auschwitz, but she later becomes a renowned clinical psychologist specializing in trauma. It’s this blend of lived horror and professional expertise that gives her story a weight that is almost unmatched. The book is widely acclaimed, and you can see why. It’s not just a memoir; it’s a manual for the human spirit. Michelle: Exactly. She’s one of the last remaining Holocaust survivors still sharing her story, and that unique perspective is what allows her to make these incredibly bold claims about suffering and freedom. Which brings us to our first, and perhaps most stunning, story from the book. Mark: I have a feeling this is going to be intense. Michelle: It is. To understand her idea of choice, we have to go to the most choiceless place imaginable: Auschwitz, 1944. A 16-year-old girl, a trained ballerina, has just been separated from her mother forever. And then, she's brought before the 'Angel of Death,' Josef Mengele.

Mark: Mengele. The notorious SS officer who performed horrific experiments. I can't even begin to imagine the terror. Michelle: It's unimaginable. Mengele, upon learning she's a dancer, orders her to dance for him. The orchestra begins to play "The Blue Danube," and this young girl, Edith, is standing there, barefoot on the cold, hard floor of the barracks. Mark: What do you even do? Refuse and you're dead. Comply and you're entertaining your mother's murderer. It’s an impossible situation. Michelle: And this is where the 'choice' begins. She could have danced with rage, with fear, with hatred. But instead, she makes a different choice. She closes her eyes and remembers her ballet master's words: "All your ecstasy in life is going to come from the inside." She doesn't dance for Mengele. She dances for herself. Mark: She mentally transports herself somewhere else. Michelle: Precisely. In her mind, she’s not in a death camp. She’s on the stage of the Budapest Opera House. The cold, filthy floor becomes a grand stage. The music isn't for a Nazi officer; it's for her. She also clings to another piece of advice from her mother, given to her on the cattle car to Auschwitz: "Just remember, no one can take away from you what you’ve put in your mind." Mark: Wow. So this is the first 'choice'—it’s not whether to dance, but how to experience the dance? She chose to reclaim her inner world. Michelle: Yes. And it’s a choice that saves her. Mengele is so impressed he tosses her a loaf of bread. And what does she do? She doesn't hoard it. She shares it with the other girls in her bunk, and that single loaf of bread keeps them alive for another day. Mark: That’s incredible. It’s like she found a loophole in oppression. They could control her body, her location, her fate, but they couldn't control her mind. Michelle: That is the seed of her entire philosophy. That even in the most extreme circumstances, a sliver of freedom always exists. The freedom to choose your response. She later sees Mengele and has this profound realization. She thinks, "He is more a prisoner than I am. He will always have to live with what he’s done." Mark: That gives me chills. To have that level of insight in that moment… it’s almost superhuman. Michelle: It’s the core of her message. The real prison isn't the one with barbed wire fences. The most confining prison is the one we build in our own minds. Mark: Okay, that story is almost beyond comprehension. It makes my own problems, my daily stresses, feel… completely trivial. Which, I think, is what most people would feel. But that's exactly what Dr. Eger argues against, right? Michelle: That is her most challenging and, I think, most important argument. She says there is no hierarchy of suffering.

Mark: I have to be honest, Michelle, that's a tough one to swallow. How can you say there's no hierarchy? Surviving Auschwitz versus, say, getting a bad performance review at work. They’re not in the same universe. Michelle: And she would agree the events are not the same. But she argues that the experience of suffering, the feeling of being trapped, is universal. She tells this incredible story from her clinical practice that makes this point perfectly. Mark: I’m listening, but I’m skeptical. Michelle: She had two patients back-to-back one morning. The first was a mother whose daughter was dying of hemophilia. She was consumed by grief, rage, and helplessness. An absolutely devastating situation. Mark: Of course. Unimaginable pain. Michelle: The very next patient was another mother, also in her forties, who was furious and in tears because the new Cadillac she’d just bought was the wrong shade of yellow. Mark: Okay, now you’re losing me. A Cadillac versus a dying child? It feels almost offensive to compare them. Michelle: I get it. And on the surface, it is. But Dr. Eger, with her unique perspective, looked deeper. She realized the woman wasn't just upset about the car. The car was a symbol of a life of unfulfilled dreams, a lonely marriage, a feeling of being completely powerless over her own happiness. Both women, in their own way, were experiencing the pain of unmet expectations and a lack of control. Mark: So you’re saying the source of the pain is different, but the internal state of suffering can be just as imprisoning? Michelle: Exactly. This is where she makes the crucial distinction between victimization and victimhood. Victimization is what happens to you. It’s external. Being sent to Auschwitz, losing a child, getting a car in the wrong color—these are events. Victimhood is an internal state. It’s a choice to stay in that place of powerlessness, to define yourself by what happened to you. Mark: I see. So the woman with the Cadillac was choosing a victim mentality over a seemingly trivial event, and that was her prison. Michelle: Yes. Dr. Eger’s point is that suffering is universal, but victimhood is optional. When we say "my suffering isn't as bad as someone else's," we often use it as an excuse to dismiss our own pain. But she argues all pain is valid and deserves compassion. The key question she says a survivor asks is not "Why me?" but "What now?" Mark: "What now?" That shifts the focus from the past to the future. From powerlessness to agency. Michelle: It’s the essence of moving from victim to survivor. It’s not about forgetting the past, but about choosing not to be defined by it. Mark: That’s a profound reframing. It’s not about the scale of the trauma, but about the choice in your response. Michelle: And that idea—that we choose our mindset—leads to the final, most difficult choice she presents. It's not just about surviving, or even thriving. It's about becoming truly free. And for her, that meant doing the one thing most people would say is impossible: forgiving.

Mark: Forgiveness. This is where I think many people, myself included, would hit a wall. How do you forgive someone like Josef Mengele? How do you forgive the architects of the Holocaust? It seems to betray the memory of those who were lost. Michelle: This is the most misunderstood part of her message. For decades, Eger herself was imprisoned by her anger and grief. She had nightmares, flashbacks. She built a new life in America, had a family, became a psychologist, but she was still carrying the weight of Auschwitz with her every single day. Mark: She was free, but not really free. Michelle: Exactly. The turning point came 35 years after the war, when she made the decision to return to the source of her pain. Not just to Auschwitz, but to Berchtesgaden, Hitler's mountain retreat. Mark: Wow. Why there? That seems like walking directly into the heart of evil. Michelle: Because she needed to confront the ghost that was haunting her. She describes standing on the balcony of Hitler's former residence, looking out at the beautiful mountains, and she makes a choice. She writes a letter of forgiveness to Hitler. Mark: I just... I can't wrap my head around that. Forgiving Hitler? Michelle: But here's the crucial part she explains. She wasn't forgiving him for his sake. He was long dead. She wasn't pardoning his actions. She was forgiving him to free herself. She realized that as long as she was consumed by hatred for him, he still had control over her. Her hatred was the final chain linking her to her past. Mark: Wow. So forgiveness isn't about saying 'what you did was okay.' It's about saying 'I will no longer let what you did control my life.' It’s an act of self-liberation. Michelle: It is the ultimate act of self-liberation. And it didn't stop there. The even harder act of forgiveness was for herself. For years, she was haunted by survivor's guilt. She believed she was somehow responsible for her mother's death because when they arrived at Auschwitz, Mengele asked if the woman with her was her mother or her sister. Edith, truthfully, said it was her mother, and her mother was sent to the gas chambers. Mark: Oh, that's an impossible burden for a child to carry. Michelle: A completely impossible burden. Her healing wasn't complete until she could go back to that moment, in her mind, and forgive that 16-year-old girl. To tell her, "You did nothing wrong. You couldn't have known." By forgiving herself, she finally broke free from the prison of her own guilt. Mark: That’s the real choice, then. To let go of the anger, the guilt, the stories that keep us locked up. Michelle: It is. It’s the choice to stop being a prisoner of the past and to start living in the present.

Mark: So when you put it all together... the dance in Auschwitz, the story of the two mothers, the act of forgiveness... it all comes back to the same powerful, and frankly, difficult idea. Michelle: Exactly. It's the radical idea that our circumstances don't define our freedom. Our choices do. We can be imprisoned by a memory, by resentment, by a minor disappointment. Or we can choose to find the key, unlock the door, and walk out. Dr. Eger's life is the ultimate proof that the mind, not the world, is the final frontier of our freedom. Mark: It’s not about what happens to us, it’s what we do with it. It’s a simple phrase, but her life gives it a weight that is almost cosmic. Michelle: And it’s a choice we all have, every single day, in ways big and small. The choice to be hopeful, the choice to be kind, the choice to be free. Mark: It really makes you ask yourself: What prison am I living in right now? And what would it take to choose to walk out? Michelle: A powerful question. We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Join the conversation on our social channels. What's one small choice you can make today to feel a little more free? Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.