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Imagine you’re 16 years old. You love ballet, you’re training for the Olympics, life is amazing—until one day, it’s VERY not.
The hostages, who are constantly on all our minds, were abducted from one minute to the next and taken into Gaza for MONTHS on end! We’re all asking ourselves the same question: how did they survive?! How did they push through day in and day out of torture in ways that we can’t fathom? HOW?!
In 1944, (Dr.) Edith Eger (a direct descendant of Reb Akiva Eger Z’l) and her family were sent to Auschwitz. The moment she arrived, a Nazi officer — the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele (hurts me to say his name)— asked her, “Is this your mother or your sister?”
Young Edith, without thinking, answered honestly: “Mother.”
And just like that, her mother was sent to the gas chambers. Can you even imagine?
No words!
That night, Mengele ordered Edith to dance for him. Think about that—her mother was tragically gone, the guilt, the fear, she was starving, terrified, and yet, she had to perform. She forced herself to dance, knowing her life depended on it. As a “reward,” she got a piece of bread, which she later shared with other prisoners.
That tiny act of kindness? It actually saved her life. Those same prisoners later hid her when the guards were looking for people to kill.
Edith somehow made it through Auschwitz, forced labor, death marches, and near starvation. By the time American soldiers liberated her camp in 1945, she was barely alive- she was 70 lbs. A soldier saw her hand moving and pulled her out of a pile. That’s how close she was to death.
After the war, she moved to the U.S., got married, and miraculously built a new life. But no matter how much she tried to push the past away, the memories haunted her. She struggled with survivor’s guilt, PTSD, and the feeling that she’d never really be free.
For years, she told herself, If I don’t think about it, it will go away. Spoiler: It didn’t.
Finally, she felt it was time to face her nightmares. She became a psychologist, determined to help others heal—because she knew what it was like to feel completely broken.
In her book The Choice, Edith Eger says something that is so basic, yet so powerful at the same time.
“You can’t change what happened to you. But you can choose what happens next.”
She analyzed how she was able to survive the Concentration Camp and I’m using this info to help me process how the hostages survived. She realized that in Auschwitz, the Nazis controlled her body—but not her mind. She still had the power to choose:
→ Hope over despair.
→ Love over hate.
→ Meaning over emptiness.
And that’s exactly what we’ve learned from her and every single hostage that has endured the horror of Gaza.
No matter what’s happened in your life, you’re not powerless.
I look towards the returning hostages in awe, and I believe we can all learn from them…
How did they all survive?!
The answer, and remember this: No one can take away your ability to choose how you live today.
Wow.
đź©·, SHIFI
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