Reviews: The Ballerina of Auschwitz (16)

I finished reading this book a few days before Edie celebrated her 97th birthday. Revisiting her story at this time, it struck me again how close she came to not surviving to adulthood. If not for a loaf of bread…

After everything she experienced at Auschwitz, Edie could have chosen to retreat from the world, consumed by bitterness and resentment. Instead, she has used her pain to create a life where she offers hope, wisdom and a heart that clearly still dances to others. Her family. Her clients. Her students. A lifetime of connections across the world.

Edie’s story is one I will never forget. No matter how many times I read or hear it, it never loses the impact of the first telling. Her courage, time and time again, when one wrong decision would have resulted in her death, baffles me.

Her resilience in the aftermath of experiences that render trauma too small a word inspires me. The choices she has made to turn unimaginable evil into a life that is a beacon of light gives me hope. If Edie can do it, we can too.

Full review and content warnings can be found on my blog.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Rider, an imprint of Ebury Press, Penguin Random House UK, for the opportunity to read this book.

As the title suggests, this is a memoir concerning the teenage years of a ballerina and gymnast, dominated by the months she spent in Auschwitz and then various camps as the war drew to its end. There are quite a few of such memoirs now and the6 never fail to be both profound and shocking. Of course there is a shocking level of brutality but more importantly, the book emphasises the resilience of the human spirit. She was extremely close to death, had typhus, pneumonia, pleurisy and a broken back and weighed about 70lbs, 5 stone at liberation, yet she survived. To quote, “I was victimised bit not a victim, hurt but not broken, the soul never dies but meaning and purpose can come from deep in the heart of what hurts us most”. Wow!

A dark story all the more uncomfortable for knowing it is true. This is a difficult read making the reader face a terrible history but also a story that - slowly and painfully - shows that we can survive and that our love for our fellow humans can drive us to help them too to survive . Beautifully and sensitively written and a valuable lesson.

Oh, this book stirred up so much emotion in me. Poignantly written it portrays the authors story in the lead up to her and her sisters imprisonment in Auschwitz, the time they spent there and what happened following their liberation. I found it so hard to read but completely compelling. It is difficult to understand the cruelty that was endured whilst admiring the courage that it took to survive such an ordeal. This is a book that needs to be read

I have read a few of these Auschwitz books but this one got me in a way others didn’t
I think because it’s told from someone who is very young makes a difference the author is the youngest of three daughters Magda, klara and Didkcu their father was a tailor very well known they lived a good life until the war
They were dragged from their homes and put on cattle trains to take them to camps they were separated first men and women then worst the girls and their mother were separated
It began they were stripped head shaved left for hours to get their uniforms so eventually got their striped dresses and horrible knickers and thrown into sheds were they slept on boards 2 to a bed
Food was virtually non existent, you went to work everyday if you were too ill you were shot if you couldn’t take it anymore you threw yourself on electric fence death was quick
Magda and Didkcu survived day after day
The book is very descriptive about the camps things I had never read before but that’s what makes it interesting too also you forget at times this is a teenager seeing all these things

I had not heard of the author's first book, 'THE CHOICE' nor of her story, so this book came to me fresh - and as a complete shock. It's the story of Edith Eger's life, but mostly of her experience of being taken to Auschwitz aged 16, of her time in the camps and how this has impacted her whole life. In this account, the original book has been condensed and reshaped potentially for young adult readers, which means that is a shorter and quickly readable account.

In spite of that, it is an emotional and harrowing read; yet beautifully written, evocatively re-creating the horrific times, the things people had to endure, and how, as the author puts it, "We can’t alter the past or control what’s coming round the next corner. But we can choose how to live now.”

Edith's choice, as she came back into the real world and her real life, was to become a psychotherapist, to help others, with her message and story of hope, resilience, and yes, choice. Choosing to bring good out of what could have become a downhill slope of depression and victimhood, the author recounts her personal story in order to help others to make the same choices of hope and help. And, too, to help next generations discover the truth of what occurred during the holocaust.

There are many accounts, both fiction and non-fiction, of those terrible times. This is one of the most powerful I have read, even though it is comparatively short and in some ways, quite matter-of-fact. This is what happened; this is what it caused; and this is the good that has somehow been able to come out of all of that.

To be read with hankie to hand, especially as Edith describes what happens to the love of her life.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the Advanced Reader Copy. This is my own honest review.

This is a powerful story which tells of a family, hauled off to a concentration camp. It’s impossible to imagine how the siblings must have felt, watching their mother being ‘sent left’ to her inevitable death in the gas chambers. It’s a frank and honest story of what those persecuted, went through and is tremendously moving. The fear they must have felt is unimaginable. Every morning at roll call, wondering if their number would be called, commiting them to the death chamber. It’s understandable why Magda and then Editke felt that all they could do, was give up and let life go. How hard it must have been to hold on and battle through, even when it seemed the end of the War was in sight.
I truly couldn’t put this book down. I had to know what happened to the sisters; did they survive and what happened next.
It’s extremely moving and I feel privileged to have been able to read it.

This is a heart rending story of two sisters who survived the prison camps during the Second World War. It is so vivid I lived every moment with the author, having access to her thoughts as well as the physical aspects of what they had to go through.
It’s hard to imagine what it was like but this was told so expressively it did manage to convey, as well as anyone could, the hardships and difficulties.

Thanks to Netgalley for a digital copy of this book

I read this book courtesy of NetGalley. An amazingly powerful read which will affect every reader differently and really no words can do it justice but will stay with the reader for a long time. I had read Edith's previous book about her time in Auschwitz 'The Choice' but this actually discloses more atrocities Edith endured and witnessed. A very deeply intense book about Edith's teenage years in the camp and also just after her release and recovery when she still came across discrimination. Although the book covers the same time as 'The Choice', it is somehow more personal and there is certainly new material of unimaginable terrors and cruelty.

Read it and be inspired at what the human spirit can endure to survive and subsequently flourish.

I finished reading this book a few days before Edie celebrated her 97th birthday. Revisiting her story at this time, it struck me again how close she came to not surviving to adulthood. If not for a loaf of bread…

After everything she experienced at Auschwitz, Edie could have chosen to retreat from the world, consumed by bitterness and resentment. Instead, she has used her pain to create a life where she offers hope, wisdom and a heart that clearly still dances to others. Her family. Her clients. Her students. A lifetime of connections across the world.

Edie’s story is one I will never forget. No matter how many times I read or hear it, it never loses the impact of the first telling. Her courage, time and time again, when one wrong decision would have resulted in her death, baffles me.

Her resilience in the aftermath of experiences that render trauma too small a word inspires me. The choices she has made to turn unimaginable evil into a life that is a beacon of light gives me hope. If Edie can do it, we can too.

Full review and content warnings can be found on my blog.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Rider, an imprint of Ebury Press, Penguin Random House UK, for the opportunity to read this book.

Edith was just 16 when she was sent to Auschwitz and almost dead when liberated. This is her retelling of her life before, during and after her time there that ensures she and her story are never forgotten.

Raw, emotional, heart breaking are the words that come to mind with this book.

The horrors of the concentration camps in WW2 and Edith's struggle as a teenager to survive along with her sister. The sights and sounds must have been horrendous and hopefully never to be experienced by anyone ever again.

This is a book everyone should read as a lesson on what humans can and would do to one another. Are we really a caring breed?

Thanks go to Edith for having the nerve to share her true story with us.