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I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
The Ballerina of Auschwitz: Young Adult Edition of The Choice by Edith Eger
Published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers on October 1st, 2024
Genres: YA History, YA memoir, YA Nonfiction
Pages: 192
Source: the publisher
Format: ARC
My Rating:
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Blurb:
In this young adult edition of the bestselling, award-winning memoir The Choice, Holocaust survivor and renowned psychologist Dr. Edith Eger shares her harrowing experiences and gives readers the gift of hope and strength.
Edie is a talented dancer and a skilled gymnast with hopes of making the Olympic team. Between her rigorous training and her struggle to find her place in a family where she’s the daughter “with brains but no looks,” Edie’s too busy to dwell on the state of the world. But life in Hungary in 1943 is dangerous for a Jewish girl.
Just as Edie falls in love for the first time, Europe collapses into war, and Edie’s family is forced onto a train bound for the Auschwitz concentration camp. Even in those darkest of moments, Edie’s beloved, Eric, kindles hope. “I’ll never forget your eyes,” he tells her through the slats of the cattle car. Auschwitz is horrifying beyond belief, yet through starvation and unthinkable terrors, dreams of Eric sustain Edie. Against all odds, Edie and her sister Magda survive, thanks to their sisterhood and sheer grit.
Edie returns home filled with grief and guilt. Survival feels more like a burden than a gift—until Edie recognizes that she has a choice. She can’t change the past, but she can choose how to live and even to love again.
My Review
This was a pretty quick read, definitely one for YA, maybe a little younger than high school in the difficulty of reading, but still the topic or the age of the characters at the time and things they thought about could be considered more high school. But it you really read Anne Frank’s diary, you know she was definitely the age and thinking about things sometimes we think middle school age shouldn’t be reading, even if they are all thinking and wondering about some of that anyway at that age.
But I digress from my review. World War II and the holocaust especially is something that when I actually spend time reading about or thinking about, it’s just so hard to imagine the enormity of what happened. Yeah, I’ve seen the pictures, and I’ve been the holocaust museum in DC. But every single time I read or hear about the experience from an actual survivor it just completely messes up my brain trying to even imagine what it could be like. Some of the things the author talks about, how in the camp they were able to ignore or learned to not be in so much pain from things like that, and then once they had been liberated immediately those pains and hunger came back. Thinking of how the body adjusts to things in even that type of situation, the hunger that I can’t imagine. Being able to have hope in the concentration camp and even while on the march or while they were forced to ride on top of a train car to protect weapons. Yet when they were finally free it was hard to hold onto that hope thinking about things they’d lost.
It’s hard to write a review of a memoir like this. Just know that it is one worth reading if you want the basic story. I feel like I would probably want to read the full adult memoir called The Choice at some point. If you’ve read the adult memoir, I’d love to hear your thoughts as well.
About the Author
Edith Eger is an eminent psychologist and one of the few remaining Holocaust survivors old enough to remember life in the camps. A colleague of Viktor Frankl, Dr. Edith Eger has worked with veterans, military personnel, and victims of physical and mental trauma. She lives in La Jolla, California, and is the author of the bestselling and award-winning books The Choice and The Gift.
Author’s Note
Dear Reader,
I’ve been writing this book for nearly eighty years. When I was sixteen, enduring first-hand the
horrors of the Holocaust; as I witnessed my children—and then my grandchildren and great-
grandchildren—come of age; as I taught high school students and became a psychologist
specializing in treating trauma; as I connected with my many beloved patients and audiences
around the world, I was already writing to you in my mind. I was longing to share with you the
tools that helped me survive the unthinkable, longing for you to know that a story of humans’
capacity for evil is also a story of our inexorable capacity for hope.
I feel a responsibility to share my story. To tell the truth about what happened so that we don’t
ever forget—and also to share a legacy of hope and zest for life so that my parents and millions
of others didn’t die in vain. I want the triumph and celebration of life to live on.
This feels like the right moment to finally share my story with you. A little over a year ago, my
sister Magda died—just a few weeks after her hundredth birthday. I realized that if I didn’t wri
this book for you now, I might miss my chance. So I’m motivated by my own mortality.
I’m also motivated by your life. I see the big challenges you face in today’s world, troubling
realities such as gun violence, cyberbullying, climate change, a global pandemic, shockingly
high rates of anxiety, depression, despair, suicide. I want to use my ninety-six years on this
planet, my near century of life and evolution and healing, to be your cheerleader and advocate.
To offer you an emotional and spiritual blueprint for coming to terms with the inevitable pain
and struggle you will encounter. And I want to give you something written especially for you at
this stage of your becoming, as you accept what you’ve inherited and endured, and embrace your
strength and authenticity, and choose to build the life you most want to live.
I gratefully offer this book to you now in the hope that you will read my story and feel that yo
are not alone in this strange work of being human. In the hope that you will read my story and
think, “If she can do it, so can I!” I offer you this book so that you too can transcend victimhood
and choose to dance through life, even in hellish circumstances. I give you my story to empower
you to be an ambassador of peace and an agent of choice in your life. I give you this book so that
you can live as you truly are: precious and free.
With all my love,
Edie
October, 2024
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