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.