The Choice

The Choice is Edith Eger's memoir of surviving Auschwitz and rebuilding her life after the Holocaust. Drawing on her experiences as a survivor and her later work as a psychologist, Eger explores how people can respond to trauma and suffering, and the role that choice, forgiveness and self-acceptance can play in healing.

• About: Survival, life after the Holocaust and psychological healing
• Topics: Trauma; resilience; forgiveness; personal responsibility; healing
• Perspective: First-hand account from a Holocaust survivor and psychologist
• Reading experience: Personal, hopeful and psychologically informed

About the book
In 1944, at sixteen years old, Eger was sent to Auschwitz, where she was separated from her parents and forced to dance for Josef Mengele. At liberation, she was pulled from a pile of bodies, barely alive.

Her story continues beyond the camps, tracing the lasting effects of what she endured and the process of learning to live with the past rather than remain imprisoned by it. Eger connects her own journey with stories and case studies from her clinical practice, showing how experiences of trauma, grief and adversity can continue to shape people's lives long after the original events.

Structured across four sections – Prison, Escape, Freedom and Healing – the book moves between Eger's past and her later psychological work. Through these experiences, she examines the distinction between what happens to us and how we respond to it, turning her life story into a wider exploration of agency and the possibility of change.

Comparable books
If you're looking for books similar to The Choice, these books also explore Holocaust survival, suffering and the ways people rebuild their lives, with perspectives ranging from psychology to personal testimony.

• Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl: Like Eger, Frankl writes as both an Auschwitz survivor and a psychologist, connecting his experiences of the Holocaust with questions of inner freedom and how people respond to suffering. Where The Choice follows Eger's journey from survival through her later process of healing, Frankl develops his ideas about meaning and purpose through logotherapy.
• The Ballerina of Auschwitz by Edith Eger: Eger revisits the experiences at the heart of The Choice through the eyes and emotions of her teenage self, including her life before, during and after Auschwitz. It shares the same personal history and focus on hope and resilience, but retells Eger's story for readers of all ages.
• A Delayed Life by Dita Kraus: Like Eger, Kraus gives a first-hand account of Nazi persecution, imprisonment at Auschwitz and the life she built after liberation. Her memoir follows her childhood in Prague through Terezín, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and into her later life in Israel, placing greater emphasis on the historical and autobiographical story of survival than on psychological healing.