Edith Eva Eger (née Elefánt, born September 29, 1927) is a Czechoslovakian-born American psychologist, a Holocaust survivor and a specialist in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Edith Eger is the youngest daughter of Lajos (a tailor) and Ilona Elefánt born in Košice, Czechoslovakia.
In March 1944, after the German occupation of Hungary, Eger was forced to live in the Kassa ghetto with her parents and Magda.
[6] The Nazis evacuated Mauthausen and other concentration camps as the Americans and the Red Army approached.
[1] Eger was sent on a death march with her sister Magda to the Gunskirchen concentration camp,[8] a distance of about 55 kilometers.
When she couldn't walk further due to exhaustion, one of the girls with whom she had shared Mengele's bread recognized her and carried her onward together with Magda.
[7] Conditions in Gunskirchen were so bad that Eger had to eat grass to survive, while other prisoners turned to cannibalism.
She weighed 32 kilograms (5 stone / 70 pounds) at the time, and had a broken back, typhoid fever, pneumonia, and pleurisy.
"[12] Edith and Magda recovered in American field hospitals and returned to Kassa where they found their sister Klara.
[1] Eger befriended Viktor Frankl, went into therapy, and received her PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Texas at El Paso in 1978.
[13][14] In her second book The Gift (2020) she encourages the reader to change the thoughts that, according to Eger, imprison us and the destructive behaviors that would hinder us.