How a dancer used her mind to survive the horrors of Auschwitz
In short: When Dr. Josef Mengele commanded a young prisoner to dance, she didn't just perform. She used a psychological technique of mental dissociation to transport herself from a death camp to a grand opera house, a survival mechanism that would later define her career as a world-renowned psychologist.
Born in 1927 in Košice, Czechoslovakia, Edith Eva Eger was a gifted gymnast and ballerina before the Nazi occupation transformed her world. Following the 1/1938 Munich Agreement, which ceded parts of her home to Hungary, and the subsequent 1944 German invasion, Eger and her family were forced into ghettos and eventually deported in May 1944. Upon arrival at Auschwitz, she faced the immediate trauma of being separated from her mother, who was killed in the gas chambers.
During her first night in the camp, Eger was forced to perform a dance for Dr. Josef Mengele. To endure the terror, she practiced a form of internal escape: while her body moved to the sounds of Strauss’s 'Blue Danube', her mind envisioned the music of Tchaikovsky and the setting of the Budapest Opera House. This ability to create an internal sanctuary became a cornerstone of her survival through months of starvation, forced blood donations, and physical abuse.
Her journey did not end at Auschwitz. She survived a grueling 55-kilometre death march to the Gunskirchen camp, where she was forced to eat grass to stay alive. By the time American forces liberated the camp in May 1945, she was found among the dead, weighing only 32 kilograms and suffering from broken bones, pneumonia, and typhoid. She later channeled these experiences into a career as a clinical psychologist, specializing in PTSD and teaching others to find freedom through the power of choice and forgiveness.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Auschwitz Survivor Dr. Edith Eger, Psychologist Who Healed Herself
- Also: Edith Eger
- Also: Edith Eger
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