Dr. Edith Eva Eger, in her insightful memoir, “The Ballerina of Auschwitz” (Atheneum 2024) tells us about her Jewish family and her need for love in 1943
Hungary. She says, “I’m the runt of the family, the unwanted child.” Her eldest sister, Klara is a violin prodigy and away in Budapest at the conservatory of music. Magda, next eldest, is the prettiest, and a pianist. Their mother always tells Magda to watch what she eats. But her mother just throws up her hands at the lively Edith.
Edith likes her own thirteen-year-old lean and muscular body, suited to dancing and gymnastics although she envies Magda’s curves. Her father, a tailor, tells Edith she’s built for couture and will be the best dressed girl in town. She likes the attention her father bestows on her, but “Like my mother’s it is precious…and precarious. As though my worthiness of their love has less to do with me and more to do with their loneliness.”
Edith says of her parents’ love and admiration in general, “Magda and I have to work at getting something we are certain there will never be enough of; Klara has to worry that at any moment she might make a fatal mistake and lose it all.” Edith loves her dance classes and her personal dance improvisations. Dancing is her fantasy world where she can reinvent, enact, and sweeten her parents’ love relationship.
One day on the way to class, she loses her school tuition money and fears her father’s anger. “I’m scared, but the fear is more personal. It’s more about something I feel I’ve done wrong.” Soon the gestapo will take the family away and end her relatively simple life.
Edith falls in love with gentle Eric. “Our bond isn’t a casual crush, a puppy love. This is love in the face of war.” You are so happy for the young people, but you fear for the young Jewish pair as their love grows deeper and you know what lies ahead. Edith must stop attending her dance classes, because she’s Jewish. These are the laws.
Their normal family life, with regular growing pains, ends abruptly when the family is taken away. Klara is away at the conservatory and might be spared the camps, if she can convince the authorities that she’s not Jewish. But the rest of the family arrives at Auschwitz, not understanding what is happening. Edith is asked if her mother is her sister. Not understanding the gravity of the question and how to answer it, she tells the truth. “Mother.” And her mother is sent to the death showers.
Edith must live with her hideous, but innocent, betrayal. Eger does not spare us the horrific details of the camp, but we know she survives to write this memoir. And (spoiler) so does Magda. The year after their liberation is almost as traumatic as being in the camp and it is information that is not as densely covered in other books and movies, so especially interesting.
This young adult edition of the author’s memoir “The Choice” earned a Young Adult Notable Book from the Association of Jewish Libraries.
Patricia Hruby Powell is the author of the award-winning books: Josephine; Lift As You Climb; Loving vs Virginia; and Struttin’ With Some Barbecue all signed and for sale at Jane Addams bookstore. Her forthcoming books are about women’s suffrage, Martha Graham, and Ella Fitzgerald, as well as waterfowl. talesforallages.com
Leave a Reply