It was a long way down the rabbit hole for Alice in Wonderland in her journey through a fantasy world with anthropomorphic characters.  Most of us by now know how that fairy tale goes.  Then there are the true tales of long and painful marches and rides through what feels more like falling into a black hole.  There is no white rabbit with a fob watch, but a terrifying doctor in his white robe whose nickname in German translates as the angel of death.  There is no make believe other than the fantasy of wanting to step into another reality.  The reality is so debilitating, there is nowhere to go but further inside oneself, coping with insistence to withstand and overcome what one has no control over.

Dr. Edith Eva Eger and Louvette Fowler celebrating the commemorative 73rd Year of her liberation from the Holocaust days that ended in 1945.

Such is the story of Edie in Auschwitz in a book called “The Choice”.  Riveting in truth, Edie, like Alice, may not have literally swam in her own pool of tears, but cried enough to bathe in it over the unthinkable that actually happened.

It’s her story.  At sixteen, stripped of her pretty life in flouncy dresses tailored by her father, she tells of her horror in events by characters who decided for her, a painfully fated reality through a holocaust of physical, emotional and mental battery.  The atrocities she endured only just began when she saw her mother being led away to what Alice would have called, a gigantic oven. It would be an almost paralyzing thought in itself, but her survival would much depend on her obedient responsiveness to the feared doctor– a trickster of a rabbit no one could have pulled out of a hat.  Asked to dance for his entertainment and after having just lost her mother, the young ballerina surrendered to an imagined stage at the Budapest Opera House, where she danced silently to a score driven by guilt that would become the overture of her heartache for a very long time.  For earlier on, when asked by Doctor Mengele if the woman was in fact her mother and not her sister, the trick was upon her to carry the weight of thinking she may have somewhat determined the fate of the one she dearly loved.  It was condemning, like having watched the woman in labor whose legs were bound shut to suffer the child in her.   

It’s a story where perhaps Alice’s fairy tale comes as an easier read.  But in making light of a story too real for the child in most of us, I saw the same Cheshire Cat in every SS guard who floated in her nightmares, grinning, much without a face and body.  I imagined the words “eat me” appearing in her hallucination over a dry piece of bread, fantasized as a piece of cake.  And the blue caterpillar smoking a Hookah came in one who gave advice–that if any of them should fall ill, they should say so in order to be taken to a nearby hospital.  Well, everyone knew there was no nearby hospital.  It was a mere beguiling offer to put an end to their suffering–an invitation to smoke away their dreams.  As for the Queen of Hearts who kept screaming “off with their heads” in Alice’s tale – they, the oppressors in Auschwitz, were a pack of cards Edie dealt with in men and women whose hearts were spades. 

It was a promenade of odd characters in real men and women who forced Edie to grow to the heights of an unseen ceiling.  Outgrowing  her perception of self and by whose forgiveness outdid the Mad’hater and his senseless party was the gift itself, born of the pain she had to endure.  Transformation was as much a part of her story as it was Alice’s, only more compelling and beyond the imagined. 

Thankfully, all fairy tales, no matter how dark end up with some kind of resolution.  Edie’s liberation came by an American GI who found and pulled her from a pile of listless bodies.  Salvation that arrived from a tearful man who offered her a handful of M&M’s should have served to symbolize the beginning of colorful sweetness in her life ahead. But her fight for freedom continued from the emotional and mental anguish that followed her long after the Holocaust days were over.  She tells us of how she continued to sit in the cell of her mind she fell into, wretched in the painful happenstance at Auschwitz.  It followed her to the days when she put herself through college, though persevering each time to triumph and not just survive to later become a wife and mother too.  Today, as Dr. Edith Eva Eger, author of a bestselling book, humanitarian, motivational speaker and renowned psychologist, she tells us that her struggles and recovery were often founded in the many patients and people she helped along the way.

Yes, it’s a different Alice In Wonderland but it’s still a fairy tale where she lives happily ever after– today, in the heart of La Jolla, with sweeping views of the water and the most beautiful sunsets.  Happily as one can, having absolved her truth.

Dr. Edith Eva Eger dining at Eddie V’s in La Jolla, CA. Dr. Edie is 91 yrs. old.

There is Alice In Wonderland and there is Edie In Auschwitz taled in the “THE CHOICE”.

The truth is, we are all somewhat like Alice and Edie.  At one time or another, we will experience challenge and adversity.  We will all fall, at least once into some rabbit hole, so to speak.

But by Dr. Edith Eva Eger, we may as well CHOOSE to win, CHOOSE to survive, CHOOSE to overcome.

“The Choice” is ours.

*Dr. Edith Eger’s book is available in many bookstores and is number one as a bestseller in many countries.  It has been translated into many different languages.  Interviewed by Oprah, Larry King and often on Ted Talks, Dr. Edie is also a friend as she is a nurturing, selfless human being.

October 24, 2018
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