Edith Eva Eger, Psychologist Who Barely Survived Auschwitz, Dies at 98

May 9, 2026 - 06:59

Edith Eva Eger, a psychologist who turned her own survival of Auschwitz into a career of treating trauma, has died at the age of 98. Eger was just 16 when she and her family were sent to the concentration camp in 1944. Her parents were killed in the gas chambers, but she and her sister survived by dancing for Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor. That brutal experience, she later said, gave her a deep understanding of human cruelty and resilience that she used to help her patients.

After the war, Eger emigrated to the United States, earned a doctorate in psychology, and built a practice in California. She specialized in treating post-traumatic stress disorder, often working with veterans and survivors of abuse. Her approach was direct and personal. She did not just listen to her patients' pain. She told them they had a choice: to remain victims or to become survivors. That message came from her own life. She spent decades struggling with guilt and nightmares before finding a way to move forward.

Eger wrote two books, including "The Choice," which became a bestseller. In it, she described how the camp taught her that freedom is not about what happens to you but about how you respond. She did not sugarcoat the past. She said the Holocaust showed her the worst of humanity, but also the best. Some guards showed small kindnesses. Prisoners shared scraps of bread. Those moments, she argued, proved that even in hell, people can choose compassion.

Her death marks the passing of another direct witness to one of history's darkest chapters. But her work lives on in the thousands of people she helped, and in the simple, hard truth she lived by: healing is possible, but only if you stop running from the past.