26.One cold dawn in April, the Jews of Kassa were rounded up and imprisoned in an old brick factory on the edge of town. A few weeks later, Magda, my parents and I were loaded into a cattle car bound for Auschwitz. My parents were murdered in the gas chambers the day we arrived. My first night in Auschwitz, I was forced to dance for SS of icer Josef Mengele, known as The Angel of Death, the man who had scrutinised the new arrivals as we came through the selection line that day and sent my mother to her death. ‘Dance for me!’ he ordered, as I stood on the cold concrete floor of the barracks, frozen with fear. Outside, the camp orchestra began to play a waltz, The Blue Danube. Remembering my mother’s advice — no one can take from you what you’ve put in your mind — I closed my eyes and retreated to an inner world. In my mind, I was no longer imprisoned in a death camp, cold and hungry and ruptured by loss. I was on the stage of the Budapest opera house, dancing the role of Juliet in Tchaikovsky’s ballet. From within this private refuge, I willed my arms to lift and my legs to twirl. I summoned the strength to dance for my life. Each moment in Auschwitz was hell on Earth. It was also my best classroom. Subjected to loss, torture, starvation and the constant threat of death, I discovered the tools for survival and freedom that I continue to use every day in my clinical psychology practice as well as in my own life. Today, I, Edith Eger, am 92 years old. I earned my doctorate in clinical psychology in 1978 and I’ve been treating patients in a therapeutic setting for more than 40 years. As a psychologist, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, an observer of my own and others’ behaviour and as an Auschwitz survivor, I am here to tell you that the worst prison is not the one the Nazis put me in. The worst prison is the one I built for myself.
