A really moving and inspiring story of how a young girl, talented as a dancer, survived in Auschwitz, even after some encounters with the notorious Dr Mengele. Her zest for life and love for her family carried her through unspeakable experiences and enabled her to rebuild her life.

This was a read like no other, truly moving, emotive & heartbreaking yet it was also full of hope and uplifting.
A beautifully gripping and insightful read.

Thanks to NetGalley, publishers and author for an ARC of The Ballerina of Auschwitz.

This is a true life story, and reading about the atrocious never gets easier. It's a hard hitting read, but isn't as detailed as some other holocaust stories. While it's hard to say this book is enjoyable due to the topic, it is a nice read.
Highly recommend

A poignant and important story about survival, love and loss. In this book we follow a young Jewish girl in Hungary who finds her life completely uprooted when the war catches up with them and they are transported to Auschwitz. Unsure if her innocent comment cost a family member their life she has to find a way to survive and keep hope. The book touches on themes I have seen in many other books similar to this (A Man’s Search for Meaning, The Twins of Auschwitz etc) where having a goal, a hope that can’t be extinguished and someone to live for becomes paramount for survival.

The way Edith and her surviving family recover and reconcile what has happened to them and what they have lost show how different people with similar (if not almost the same) circumstances react to the same event differently.

The book is an easy although heavy read and absolutely important and vital for the continued fight against fascism and anti semitism. There are many moments where Edith should have died but was given a second, third and fourth chance at life. Survival can be so random. Hearing about how rough her health was and how slow recovery was made a deep impression and is an aspect I feel is so often forgotten when you are taught about history. The war might have ended but the suffering and the mentality of nazis didn’t.

In 1944, at just 16 years old, young dancer Edith Eger was sent to Auschwitz. In her raw and deeply personal memoir, Eger recounts the unimaginable horrors she witnessed and the resilience that ultimately saved her life – surviving and being rescued barely alive when the camp was finally liberated.

Now an esteemed psychologist, Dr Edith Eger is one of the few remaining Holocaust survivors with vivid memories of life in the camps. She is the author of bestselling, award-winning books such as The Choice and The Gift, and she dedicates her life to helping victims of trauma, including veterans and military personnel.

When I first requested this title from NetGalley, I mistakenly believed it was a work of fiction, and I hesitated upon discovering it was non-fiction. However, I am incredibly grateful that I chose to read it. Eger’s memoir is a story of loss and heartache, and is not just a testament to her survival but a poignant exploration of hope and resilience in the face of unimaginable adversity.

Her story is a harrowing read, but a powerful reminder of the strength of the human spirit.

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Heartbreaking yet hopeful, beautifully written book.

Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for a chance to read an early copy of this memoir.

A heartbreaking, and deeply affecting book, but I found it also uplifting. The author's testimony is deeply disturbing, but her writing is so clear and direct that the book is impossible to put down; I am very glad that I was able to read it.

This book is like no other that I have read. If I'd been asked beforehand if it's possible for a Auschwitz novel to be uplifting I have been certain it couldn't, and yet The Ballerina of Auschwitz manages it. To be clear, it is also heart breaking, but there is a definite feel of hope at the same time.

This book is both heartbreaking and beautiful at the same time. The hope and strength that Edith has throughout kept me gripped to reading it. Thankyou for sharing your story Edith.

A harrowing read which ultimately leaves you with a sense of hope and resilience.

Edith - a Jew, a gymnast and ballet dancer - who with her sister Magda survives a year in Auschwitz. Told graphically you are given a personal account of her survival against the odds and her return home. Her choice is then to live despite what happened to her or allow herself to be completely subsumed by her experiences.

Despite the horrors she saw Edith faced the future with hope - a lesson to us all.

This is a heart rending story of two sisters who survived the prison camps during the Second World War. It is so vivid I lived every moment with the author, having access to her thoughts as well as the physical aspects of what they had to go through.
It’s hard to imagine what it was like but this was told so expressively it did manage to convey, as well as anyone could, the hardships and difficulties.

I had never come across Edith Eger before receiving this ARC from NetGalley. I am so grateful to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this moving book. I understand that this is a young adult version of Eger's longer memoir, 'The Choice'. I have to admit that having read The Ballerina of Auschwitz I'm now keen to read the longer book. This book seemed to me to be pitched perfectly at a young adult market. It can at times be a harrowing read (particularly towards the end when the impact of being imprisoned in Auschwitz really starts to tell its toll on the young Eger's mind and body) but it is a story that undoubtedly needs to be told, and which is written in a way that would, I think, resonate with young adults - Eger's story focuses primarily upon her life between the ages of 16-18, her first love and her hopes and dreams for the future. It provides insights into very dark days and how to move on past traumatic events. I will be recommending to the young people I know.

A beautiful written incredible book which should be compulsory reading within secondary schools. It gives insight but also hope.

Thank you Netgalley

Firstly, tremendous thanks to Edith Eger, Ebury Publishing, and Penguin Random House for the ARC I received. Secondly, another thank you to Edith for telling and retelling her tale. As harrowing as it is, it spares much of the gory details whilst still conveying the nightmare endured by too many people, too many Jewish people, at the hands of fellow humans.

The Ballerina of Auschwitz is a fairly gentle recollection of past happiness pre-war, first love, captivity and enslavement, and the life of a survivor. I say this in the loosest sense because although the descriptions of the horrors endured are not overly graphic compared to historical non-fiction, and fictionalized accounts of time spent in German designed death camps. On the one hand, one could argue that the book doesn’t quite convey the depth of the trauma suffered because it doesn’t dwell on lengthy descriptions. On the other hand, the book satisfies its attempts to take a slice of history and retrospectively examine events as if they were unfolding for the first time.

Edith Eger had everything to live for. Blessed with a talented family, she had a well-sought-after tailor for a father, a violinist for a sister, and a beautiful middle sister who flirted her way through life. Eger, herself, was a wonderful ballerina tipped to represent her country for the Olympics, until the inevitable struck and her family were called up for the camps. Leaving behind her first love with home she had dreams of settling, and raising a family, with in Palestine, she finds herself on a journey that covers the eighteen months pre-liberation. Sharing her thoughts and memories of the time, we are able to glimpse, but never truly understand, what it was like for Jewish people living during Hitler’s regime.

It must take a lot of strength and courage to live through a nightmare, not just once, but through several retellings of events that should never have befallen another person. The Ballerina of Auschwitz sees Eger speak directly to the reader. Reading, I felt we were having a one-sided conversation where she opened up to me about the hardest time of her life. I felt trusted with her story that was not enough to burden me with grief because although she was unable to protect her mother, she sought to protect me, and any other reader in this version of her experience.

The story was raw, honest, and heartbreaking in so many ways, and yet, it was inspirational to feel the love and forgiveness that Eger is able to project despite the life she has led. Although the book is written decades on from her experience, there is an Anne Frankness about Eger’s writing. Whilst it is not a journal, it is clear that even if some memories are repressed, for the most part, Eger is able to summon certain points in time to mind as clearly as if it was yesterday. It is these memories that haunt and inspire me to be better, be stronger, be more transparent, more forgiving, and less judgmental.

Without giving too much away, you should read this book if you enjoy memoirs, Second World War History, and sentiment over sensationalism. Obviously, there are trigger warnings for people of Jewish descent, particularly if you have lost ancestors, or are survivors of this time, if you are German, especially if you come from certain lineages, and generally anyone who is hugely empathetic and affected by stories of human indecency. However, this retelling leaves a lot to read between the lines making it suitable for younger adults who are looking for a realistic account that goes beyond the mechanics of war. I was particularly moved by Eger’s capacity to fall in love, and the marked difference to how people dealt with moving on. Throughout the novella, I felt entirely engaged by a teenage Edith and satisfied in knowing that she was, indeed, a survivor, not a victim. I can’t speak for the earlier work this is based on, but in its own right, The Ballerina of Auschwitz is a 5/5 book and a reminder of times we should be seeking to not repeat when we see the damage that echoes of the holocaust still present.

I have started this review about 6 times now. It’s hard to encapsulate the essence of this beautifully told story of how in the very darkest of times.

The sheer strength of will to endure in Auschwitz as such a young girl. Written for a YA audience, books like this are so important. Thank you to Edith Eger for sharing a small but important part of her very long life and to NetGalley for the ARC

Imagine your worst nightmare, several times over, and then even worse again, and Edith Eger has lived it.

A survivor of three Nazi “labour” camps; Auschwitz, Mauthausen and Gunskirchen, as Jews, Edith and her sisters survived the war by a combination of strength, determination and luck. They were shot at, singled out and humiliated.

Yet somehow they each survived their ordeal, making them much stronger individuals.

When the war was over, each of them found it difficult to come to terms with what had taken place. The brutality and horror of the conditions that they’d been subject to, and the loss of other family members that they were separated from.

Somehow they moved on and got on with their lives. Edith ending up in America with a new husband, and building a new life and family away from her home country that bought so many memories.

However Edith didn’t escape the past fully, and didn’t realise that she was suffering from post traumatic stress until much later on life, when her behaviour in certain situations was questionable to say the least.

So Edith decided that she needed help, and in doing so, found that she wanted to help others. For many years Edith has been a celebrated psychologist helping others with PTSD. She is a remarkable woman, as are her sisters.

This is a book that will make you re-evaluate your life and the decisions that you make on a daily basis. It will also make you truly grateful to be alive.

It is an astoundingly emotional memoir. I found this to be beautifully written and I feel everyone should give this a read at one point or another,

Beautifully written. Heartbreaking, joyful & hopefully.
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Beautifully written. Heartbreaking, joyful & hopefully.

I read almost the entire book in one sitting as I was totally drawn into the life of imprisonment which Edith describes.
The writing style is quick, short, precise words which enable the reader to 'hear' the author recounting her experiences. Reading the book felt like listening to a radio interview.
The devastating effects of the Second World War are brought to life in this deeply moving, and often disturbing, account of the maltreatment of Jews and other minorities by the Nazis.
I was amazed by the strength and resilience of Edith and her sister to be able to survive six months in a prisoner of war camp. The most profound moment was when the American army came to liberate the inmates and were searching for survivors among the emaciated bodies. Edith and Magda almost missed their rescue as they were so weak, but managed to attract a soldier's attention at the last moment before the troops were going to leave.
Edith's courage, determination and forgiveness are beyond belief, and I found myself constantly questioning how I might have lived through the same harrowing circumstances.
I would suggest everyone read this book to understand completely the horrors of the Holocaust.

Firstly, Edith, I commend your bravery for writing this harrowing story that is your life and congratulations on coming out the other side the way you have.

Having visited Auschwitz myself and seeing for myself the cold, grey, desolate, lifeless place for myself I can only imagine the horror you and millions a went through and this incredibly well written book brings it to the forefront.

Thank you for sharing and giving hope to millions.