Speaker 1: Pushkin. My mom looked at me and hugged me, and
Speaker 1: she said, we don't know where to be going, We
Speaker 1: don't know what's going to happen. Just remember, no one
Speaker 1: can take away from you what you put here in
Speaker 1: your own mind. And that's exactly what happened. That's doctor
Speaker 1: Edith Eager recalling the advice her mother gave her when
Speaker 1: she and her Jewish family were captured in Hungary and
Speaker 1: put on a cattle car to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Speaker 1: Edith was just sixteen at the time. Today she's ninety
Speaker 1: four years old. She's a psychologist who specializes in post
Speaker 1: traumatic stress disorder and is the author of the book
Speaker 1: The Choice, in which she describes how learning to control
Speaker 1: her own mind helped her to survive the Holocaust. Edith
Speaker 1: had been taught that lesson as a young child when
Speaker 1: she was training to be a dancer, but she hadn't
Speaker 1: understood its meaning at the time. You know, my mother
Speaker 1: took me to a ballet school and my ballet master
Speaker 1: told me one day that ecstasy comes from inside out.
Speaker 1: And I had no idea what he was talking about.
Speaker 1: But you know, in Auschwitz, it came to me when
Speaker 1: nothing came from the outside. I still had my spirit
Speaker 1: that no nuts she could take away. On today's episode,
Speaker 1: we hear from doctor Edith Eager, ninety four year old
Speaker 1: Holocaust survivor. I'm maya Shunker and this is a slight
Speaker 1: change of plans, a show about who we are and
Speaker 1: who we become in the face of a big change.
Speaker 1: An estimated six million Jewish people were killed during the Holocaust.
Speaker 1: More than half were murdered in concentration camps. The largest
Speaker 1: and deadliest concentration camp was Auschwitz in Nazi occupied Poland.
Speaker 1: More than a million Jewish people were killed there, many
Speaker 1: of them sent directly to the gas chambers when they
Speaker 1: arrived by train. Doctor Edith Eager is here today to
Speaker 1: share her story of surviving Auschwitz. It was spring of
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four when the Nazis came for Edith and
Speaker 1: her family. Edith was sixteen and living with her parents
Speaker 1: in Budapesh. Her oldest sister, Clara was off studying piano
Speaker 1: in the city, but in the rest of her family,
Speaker 1: her older sister Mada, and her mom and her dad
Speaker 1: were home for state or dinner. After dinner, my father
Speaker 1: got up and kissed us on our heads and we
Speaker 1: went to sleep, and a couple hours later, big banging
Speaker 1: on the door to get ready, to get ready, to quickly, quickly, quickly.
Speaker 1: It was Nazi soldiers who were showing up. What happened
Speaker 1: next when they came in The Hungarian Nazis were terrible, terrible,
Speaker 1: so there was not a kind word or anything. You
Speaker 1: become like someone who's done something bad. It didn't matter
Speaker 1: what you said. It was no way out at that point.
Speaker 1: It was too late. We were taken into a big
Speaker 1: factory and from there to a train station to Oushwitz,
Speaker 1: and we had to leave everything behind. I have a
Speaker 1: picture of the dress that I wore, and was a
Speaker 1: beautiful dress, and I wore it also a lot when
Speaker 1: I was with my boyfriend. Wow. When you and your
Speaker 1: parents and your sister Mata are put in a cattle
Speaker 1: car and unbeknownst to you are heading to Auschwitz, your
Speaker 1: mom tells you something on that ride that really sticks
Speaker 1: with you. Do you mind sharing what she told you?
Speaker 1: My mom looked at me and hugged me, and she said,
Speaker 1: we don't know where be going, we don't know what's
Speaker 1: going to happen. Just remember, no one can take away
Speaker 1: from you what you put here in your own mind,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly what happened. Everything was taken away from me.
Speaker 1: When you arrive at Auschwitz, you are separated into two lines, right,
Speaker 1: so everyone between ages fourteen and forty are put in
Speaker 1: one line and everyone else is put into another. And
Speaker 1: an officer named doctor Joseph Mangela, the infamous Nazi officer
Speaker 1: known as the Angel of Death, ask you whether your
Speaker 1: mom is in fact your mom or whether she's your sister,
Speaker 1: and instinctively you answer with the truth, which is that
Speaker 1: she is your mom. What happens next? What happens after
Speaker 1: you tell him that she's your mom? He pointed my
Speaker 1: mother to go that way, and my sister ride this way,
Speaker 1: and I began to walk behind my mother. He came
Speaker 1: and grabbed me. Never before, I never forget those eyes,
Speaker 1: and he said, you're gonna see your mother very soon.
Speaker 1: She's just gonna take a shower. M Later on, you
Speaker 1: engage with a couple a fellow prisoner who supervises other prisoners,
Speaker 1: and you ask her when will I see my mother again?
Speaker 1: I was told I would see her soon, and that's
Speaker 1: when she she delivers this devastating news to you. I said, well,
Speaker 1: I want to know, Ben, will I meet my mother?
Speaker 1: And she pointed the chimney and she said, she's burning dead.
Speaker 1: She said, you better talk about her in past tense.
Speaker 1: She used that kind of a language. Everybody over forty,
Speaker 1: everybody under fourteen, they're never given a chance, maybe taken
Speaker 1: to the chamber and mass. Sister and Magda hugged me
Speaker 1: and said, despit it never dies. That's obviously such a
Speaker 1: powerful thing to tell you in a moment of acute
Speaker 1: shock and trauma and grief. And then to pile on
Speaker 1: top of all of that, you have to see your
Speaker 1: parents killer again. That night, you see Joseph Mangela again.
Speaker 1: That night he asks you to dance for him as
Speaker 1: a form of entertainment in the barracks, and you have
Speaker 1: this realization for the first time that while your physical
Speaker 1: freedom has been entirely stripped from you, you still have
Speaker 1: control over some of the mental choices that you make.
Speaker 1: That you can reframe this dance in a way that
Speaker 1: nourishes you and helps bring you some kind of sustenance
Speaker 1: in that moment. Can you share more about how you
Speaker 1: reframed that dance, what you visualized. I closed my eyes
Speaker 1: and I imagined that the music was Tchaikovsky, and I
Speaker 1: was dancing the Rome and Juliet at these That's how
Speaker 1: I think it's very important to think about you're thinking,
Speaker 1: because whatever you think, you create. The feeling comes from
Speaker 1: your thoughts. There's there's this moment of generosity that you
Speaker 1: display where Mangela offers you bread after your dance and
Speaker 1: you end up sharing it with the girls that are
Speaker 1: around you, right you know. I looked at there and
Speaker 1: and I wanted to garbble it up. And then I
Speaker 1: looked up and I said to myself, no way, and
Speaker 1: I shared the bread. It was one foot one head,
Speaker 1: one foot one head. That's how we slept. There were
Speaker 1: very little spaces between us, so we really had to cooperate,
Speaker 1: not complete. And when I danced and I got that
Speaker 1: piece of bread, it was the best thing that I
Speaker 1: remember that I did with a little piece of bread
Speaker 1: that six of us were enjoying. There's this really beautiful
Speaker 1: moment you share at Magda where that exceptional quality comes
Speaker 1: out and you Edith where where again you realize that
Speaker 1: you have control over your mind. And so your sister,
Speaker 1: who had for so long prided herself on being the
Speaker 1: beauty in your family comes to you. She has just
Speaker 1: had her head shaven by the Nazis, and she asked
Speaker 1: you how she looks. I realized then as you realize
Speaker 1: now too. I'm sure that I could point out what
Speaker 1: she lost or pay attention to what she still had left.
Speaker 1: So instead of telling her how she lived in her nakedness,
Speaker 1: I said, Magda, you have beautiful eyes, and I didn't
Speaker 1: see it when you had your hair all over her place,
Speaker 1: as she said, thank you. Wow, that is so moving.
Speaker 1: You gotta change your thinking and look at the problem
Speaker 1: as a challenge and look at the crisis as a transition.
Speaker 1: I think it's very important to think a boy you're thinking.
Speaker 1: Towards the end of the war, the Nazis forced the
Speaker 1: prisoners at your camp to relocate to another camp in
Speaker 1: what became known as the Death March from Auschwitz, and
Speaker 1: you had to walk over thirty four miles. So many
Speaker 1: people died from weakness and illness along the way, and
Speaker 1: officers were known to shoot at anybody who lagged behind,
Speaker 1: anyone who fall behind, And at one point edith you
Speaker 1: found yourself unable to keep walking due to extreme exhaustion.
Speaker 1: You saw the kindness you had paid to others paid
Speaker 1: back to you during this experience. Right you had shared
Speaker 1: the small piece of bread that you were given with
Speaker 1: the other girls, and in turn, when you were walking
Speaker 1: what you believe would be your last steps, they used
Speaker 1: their arms to create this chair for you and help
Speaker 1: you continue forward, help you survive. Thank god I did,
Speaker 1: because when I was in a dead march, when you stopped,
Speaker 1: you were shot, and when a ghost so saw me
Speaker 1: just I was so tired. And this is you know,
Speaker 1: when when I thought I'm really going to die, I
Speaker 1: didn't think I can walk anymore, and they came and
Speaker 1: they carried me. Imagine how the worst condition brings out
Speaker 1: the bestiness. I wouldn't have made it if I would
Speaker 1: have garbled up that bread that giving is getting. We'll
Speaker 1: be back in a moment with a slight change of plans.
Speaker 1: Doctor Edith Eager was just sixteen years old when she
Speaker 1: was put on a train to Auschwitz. She spent a
Speaker 1: total of eight months in Nazi concentration camps. After enduring
Speaker 1: what is known as the death March from Auschwitz to Austria,
Speaker 1: Edith was on the brink of death herself, but then
Speaker 1: on May fourth, nineteen forty five troops from the US
Speaker 1: Army's seventy first Infantry came in and liberated the people
Speaker 1: at the camp. An American soldier found Edith lying among
Speaker 1: the dead. He noticed her hand moving slightly. She was
Speaker 1: in terrible condition. She had typhoid, fever, pneumonia, and a
Speaker 1: broken back. The soldier called for medical help and brought
Speaker 1: Edith to safety. For the entire of her time in
Speaker 1: the concentration camps, Edith had been holding out some small
Speaker 1: hope that her parents and boyfriend might still be alive,
Speaker 1: but after she was rescued, she learned that the Nazis
Speaker 1: had murdered all of them. One thing I so appreciate
Speaker 1: about how you share your story, Edith, is that you
Speaker 1: refuse to make a clean delineation between imprisonment and liberation.
Speaker 1: I hope you don't mind my quoting you. You said
Speaker 1: I thought my freedom would begin the moment the war
Speaker 1: ended and the death camps were liberated. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that the worst prison was not the one the Nazis
Speaker 1: put me in, but the one I built for myself
Speaker 1: in the decades after the war, when I chose to
Speaker 1: stay a hostage of the past, stuck in a mental
Speaker 1: prison of secrets, survivor's guilt, and self limiting beliefs. You
Speaker 1: mentioned that you didn't feel suicidal when you were in
Speaker 1: the concentration camp, but it was upon release that that's
Speaker 1: when you encountered this profound depression. What was the difference?
Speaker 1: Because my parents didn't come home while I was in
Speaker 1: a camp. I could imagine the beautiful meeting with my
Speaker 1: parents with my boyfriend. None of that came true, and
Speaker 1: I had nothing to live for, no meaning, no perfect nothing,
Speaker 1: And I talked about that existential vacuum that you don't
Speaker 1: have anything to get up for. So we agree, well,
Speaker 1: we're not what happened, But what didn't happen? When my
Speaker 1: granddaughter wanted to go to her dance at the school
Speaker 1: and asked me to buy a pretty dress. I did
Speaker 1: a beautiful dress, and I came home and out of
Speaker 1: the blue, I was crying. I didn't get it was
Speaker 1: the matter with me? What am I crying about? I
Speaker 1: just bought Lindsey a dress so she can go to
Speaker 1: her dance. And then I realized that I didn't cry
Speaker 1: because of that. I cried because I never went to
Speaker 1: a dance. And that's what grief is. All about not
Speaker 1: what happened, but what did happen. I will never forget Auschwitz.
Speaker 1: I don't overcome it. I don't know that word at all,
Speaker 1: but I call it my cherished wound. And I have
Speaker 1: a special place in my heart, specially for my boyfriend
Speaker 1: who was killed a day before liberation. So not to
Speaker 1: run away from the past, and not to run away
Speaker 1: from crying, because then you cry, you get rid of
Speaker 1: something that vehicle fully say, oh I had a good
Speaker 1: cry and I feel better. Yeah. One thing that I
Speaker 1: think will be so important for people to hear from
Speaker 1: you is in your book you mentioned one thing you
Speaker 1: can't change is the past, and there has to be
Speaker 1: an acceptance around that, and you talk about how you
Speaker 1: were plagued by guilt for so many years around that
Speaker 1: answer you gave to Joseph mangela right, why didn't I
Speaker 1: tell him that my mom was my sister that plagued
Speaker 1: you for so long, even though Edith you were a child.
Speaker 1: You know what, how are you supposed to know what
Speaker 1: the outcome was going to be? But it is not
Speaker 1: uncommon for people to wrongly blame themselves for what happens,
Speaker 1: and so I would love to hear about how you
Speaker 1: found accepted in that and how you came to how
Speaker 1: you found peace in what happened. I think there is
Speaker 1: one very short sentence that if I knew then, I
Speaker 1: would have done things differently. If you knew then what
Speaker 1: you know now, it would have been a very different picture.
Speaker 1: My parents had tickets to go to America and they
Speaker 1: never used it, and that's why I think they would
Speaker 1: help everybody. Just one sentence and forgive yourself. So I
Speaker 1: like to live in a present. The question is not
Speaker 1: why me? The question is what now? Because the past
Speaker 1: is gone and the future is not yet. Wow. You
Speaker 1: ended up moving to the US and trained to become
Speaker 1: a psychotherapist, doctor Edith. Your life's work has been to
Speaker 1: help people who have had trauma quote escape the concentration
Speaker 1: camp of their own minds. That's how you've talked about
Speaker 1: your work. And what's interesting is that you've said it
Speaker 1: actually took you years to finally free yourself. Right, You
Speaker 1: were freeing all of these people through your clinical practice,
Speaker 1: but to do that for yourself took more time and
Speaker 1: more work. What was that process? Like? I was talking
Speaker 1: to paraplegics and one of them was why me? And
Speaker 1: terribly angry and blaming and blaming God's country. And conversely,
Speaker 1: I say that that there was another guy with the
Speaker 1: same symptomatology, same diagnosis, same prognosis, and told me, hey, hey, doc,
Speaker 1: I'm in a wheelchair and I can see my children's
Speaker 1: eyes much closer. And I was given a second chance
Speaker 1: and life. And I feel lie and impastor and I'm
Speaker 1: wearing a white coat and it says doctor Eager, Department
Speaker 1: of Psychiatry. I went to school, and I went to school,
Speaker 1: and I went to school, and that's when I decided
Speaker 1: I must go back to our streets. I revisited that place,
Speaker 1: and I started to cry buckets that I'm here looking
Speaker 1: at it rather than being in the ditch where I
Speaker 1: would have been in no time at all. I think
Speaker 1: it's very important to make peace the past, not to
Speaker 1: run from it or fight it, and not to try
Speaker 1: to forget it, because that's when I learned that life
Speaker 1: is from inside out. It's up to me what I
Speaker 1: do with the external circumstance. So it's very important not
Speaker 1: to run away from the past the way I did.
Speaker 1: I didn't tell anyone I was in Auschwitz close to
Speaker 1: twenty years If you ask me who I was, I
Speaker 1: would say, who do you want me to be? You'll
Speaker 1: become a very, very talented schizophrenic. It must have been
Speaker 1: so painful for you to return to the place where
Speaker 1: you experience the most profound trauma a human can experience
Speaker 1: in their life. When I went back to our Shwitz
Speaker 1: for a moment, I tooed I so Anazi, it was
Speaker 1: a person in uniform. But when I realized that I
Speaker 1: have an passport in my pocket and that time free,
Speaker 1: and I was so glad that I was able to
Speaker 1: go back to Auschwitz and go back to the lions
Speaker 1: then and look at that lion and tell them that
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take my freedom, and I'm gonna stop blaming myself.
Speaker 1: And I've stopped running around with survivors. Geared that even
Speaker 1: when I was graduating kum Loud there, I didn't show
Speaker 1: up for my graduation because I had so much survivor's
Speaker 1: guard that I didn't deserve it because they were And
Speaker 1: that's a whole new interview you and I can talk on,
Speaker 1: is how you deny your successes and that gave yourself permission,
Speaker 1: give yourself permission to go through the age. There is
Speaker 1: no forgiveness without going true that age. And it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to articulate this, I guess, so I'll try.
Speaker 1: I'll just try my best. But as a sixteen year old,
Speaker 1: you somehow had the cognitive wherewithal to identify moments, however small,
Speaker 1: in your experience, in outfits where you could control your
Speaker 1: own mind, where you took power away from the Nazis
Speaker 1: and gave that power to yourself. And I wonder, how
Speaker 1: did that just come naturally to you? Did you feel
Speaker 1: it was an intentional act on your part? And I
Speaker 1: asked this, Edith, because your mind is so remarkable and
Speaker 1: unusual in nature, and I'm trying to figure out if
Speaker 1: we can even relate to you. I've read your work,
Speaker 1: and I know you mentioned that your sister Magda doesn't
Speaker 1: share the same instincts as you. Right, she would fantasize,
Speaker 1: I think, so understandably about getting revenge on the Nazis
Speaker 1: and murdering the Nazis. And I think probably more people
Speaker 1: can relate to her point of view than yours, because
Speaker 1: yours is so exceptional. And I want to know for
Speaker 1: those listening who want to cultivate a doctor Edith mindset
Speaker 1: is our way for us to cultivate it. I decided
Speaker 1: that they are the prisoners, not me. So I turned
Speaker 1: hatred it to pity that they be bearing at uniform
Speaker 1: and they murdering children, and so does hate return to
Speaker 1: be pity. I ended up praying for them in my
Speaker 1: own way, um that that that they are really the
Speaker 1: true prisoners, not me. Forgiveness is a gift that I
Speaker 1: give myself that I don't carry. Then arswer with me
Speaker 1: that I don't carry the hatred me. That is really
Speaker 1: not going to empower me. It's going to deplete me.
Speaker 1: And I and I don't want to give another inch.
Speaker 1: And I want to live a full life. I want
Speaker 1: to have love and faith and I and I want
Speaker 1: to have passion for life. I'm wondering, how would you
Speaker 1: capture the biggest way in which you changed through this experience,
Speaker 1: ah All. I can tell you that I live in
Speaker 1: a present, and I stay away from why questions because
Speaker 1: why it requires that, because and that requires to really
Speaker 1: know all the reasons why you are the way you are.
Speaker 1: So I live today, yesterday, he's gone. Tomorrow is not
Speaker 1: yet as I told you, and I am in the
Speaker 1: process of discovery, not recovery, but discovery. The discovery apparts
Speaker 1: in me that doesn't hold on to the past, that
Speaker 1: does not ever falls into the victim's mentality. I was victimized.
Speaker 1: It's not my it's not my personality, it's not who
Speaker 1: I am. And I think that's why I'm so happy
Speaker 1: that my book is gonna be in my grand great
Speaker 1: grand children's living room. I have seven of those, and
Speaker 1: I think that I can be a good roma to
Speaker 1: everyone to write that book. Edith, your book is going
Speaker 1: to be in my great grandchildren's living room. It's going
Speaker 1: to be in all of our living rooms. It is
Speaker 1: an unbelievable work of art and humanity and science. And wow,
Speaker 1: a lot of tears every page, a lot of tears.
Speaker 1: And I think crying is very good as long as
Speaker 1: it doesn't take you away from the present, because that's
Speaker 1: the only thing you can change. Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Join me next week when I talk to doctor Eelat
Speaker 1: fish Bach, a professor of psychology an expert in the
Speaker 1: science of motivation. She'll teach us how to set smarter
Speaker 1: goals for ourselves and give us science based strategies to
Speaker 1: help us reach them. A slight change of plans is
Speaker 1: created written an executive produce by me Maya Schunker. The
Speaker 1: Slight Change Family includes Tyler Green our senior producer, Emily
Speaker 1: Rosteck our producer and fact checker, Jen Guera, our senior editor,
Speaker 1: Ben Holiday our sound engineer, and Neil Lavelle, our executive producer.
Speaker 1: Louis Skara wrote our theme song, and Ginger Smith helped
Speaker 1: arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is a
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries. So big thanks to everyone there,
Speaker 1: including Nicolemrano, Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, Heather Fame and Carly Niggliori,
Speaker 1: and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.
Speaker 1: You can follow a Slight Change of Plans on Instagram
Speaker 1: at your Maya Sugar. I hope you'll do that someday
Speaker 1: that we can exchange philosophies and do a semin up together.
Speaker 1: Oh that would be a dream for me and it
Speaker 1: was such an honor. I look forward to staying in touch.
Speaker 1: Me too, me too, me too, Please do that definitely.
Speaker 1: I love you, I love you too, Eadie