Atheneum Books for Young Readers is honored to publish the young adult edition of Dr. Edith Eva Eger’s award-winning and New York Times bestselling memoir The Choice. On sale October 1, 2024, THE BALLERINA OF AUSCHWITZ 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.
With over 400,000 net sales, The Choice has become an instant classic. Now written from Edith’s teenage point of view, Dr. Eger describes the past in The Ballerina of Auschwitz with insight, language, and experience of the present, bridging the gap between historical events and perspectives, and the issues and concerns of young readers today. A story about humanity’s capacity for evil becomes, through her eyes and experience, a story of people’s inexorable capacity for hope.
| THE BALLERINA OF AUSCHWITZ by Dr. Edith Eva Eger
Atheneum Books for Young Readers ♦ October 1, 2024 ISBN: 9781665952552 ♦ eBook ISBN: 9781665952576 ♦ Ages 12+; Grades 7+ |
| ★ “Eger’s present-tense stream-of-consciousness narrative allows readers to experience the brutality of the Nazis but also the cooperation and encouragement among the inmates and the events that gave her postwar life meaning. A luminous memoir of human resilience.”
– Kirkus Reviews, starred review ★ “Eger pares down The Choice, her National Jewish Book Award–winner and New York Times best selling combination Holocaust memoir and self-help book, into a sensitive, thought-provoking account for teens. . . . Impactful for all readers, especially history enthusiasts or fellow trauma survivors.” – Booklist, starred review |
Letter To Readers
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 write 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 you 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
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.
