The usual read of this genre, sad, unexplainable hatred, hope and love. Interesting was the readers description of people hopes to get to Palestine!

The Ballerina Of Auschwitz tells the heartbreaking true story of Edith Eger's life before, during, and after the holocaust

I always find books on this subject hard to really review because how can you say you enjoyed a book about such pain and suffering? This book was eye-opening, it was harrowing and it is a testament to the hope and strength shown by so many under such terrible conditions.

5 stars Mrs Eger. For your story, and for your will and determination.

Thank you to the publisher for granting me access to a copy of this book via Netgalley.

This is a beautiful but harrowing book. I love that the author has rewritten this for a younger audience. I feel it is really accessible for young adults and teens.

And gives such a vivid picture of what it was like in world war two.

My daughter is currently too young but I will be recommending this book when she gets older.

This is a powerful story which tells of a family, hauled off to a concentration camp. It’s impossible to imagine how the siblings must have felt, watching their mother being ‘sent left’ to her inevitable death in the gas chambers. It’s a frank and honest story of what those persecuted, went through and is tremendously moving. The fear they must have felt is unimaginable. Every morning at roll call, wondering if their number would be called, commiting them to the death chamber. It’s understandable why Magda and then Editke felt that all they could do, was give up and let life go. How hard it must have been to hold on and battle through, even when it seemed the end of the War was in sight.
I truly couldn’t put this book down. I had to know what happened to the sisters; did they survive and what happened next.
It’s extremely moving and I feel privileged to have been able to read it.

Whilst many of you might have read Edith’s book The Choice, this book is focused solely on Edith’s life before, during and immediately after Auschwitz, with an emphasis on her teenage emotions and Edith’s first love, Eric. It has been adapted from her original words in The Choice but it includes approximately 30 percent entirely new material, giving the reader an intimate understanding of the Edith’s journey.

I cannot begin to put this book into words. Every single sentence will touch your heart and squeeze it. To hear of the horrors one human can do to another from someone who experienced it is beyond heartbreaking and there are just no right words to describe it. But to read of the strength of the human spirit, love and hope amidst all that horror is just so humbling.

I cried for most of this book, which is wholly expected I think. But it also filled me with so much warmth and strength and so much resolve to live with an outlook like Edith: to do the best we can in the life we are living, to love well and to choose life and kindness.

“We [all] have the capacity to hate and the capacity to love. Which one we reach for […] is up to us.”

I hope you all pick this book up.

“It’s the first time I see that we have a choice: to pay attention to what we’ve lost or to pay attention to what we still have.”
― Edith Eger, The Choice

Edie was a teenager who had hopes of being on the Hungarian Olympic gymnastics team. She took dance and gymnastic lessons and had fallen in love for the first time. She had dreams and aspirations for her life. Unfortunately, the world was not a safe place and she and her family were put on a train headed toward Auschwitz. The Ballerina of Auschwitz: Young Adult Edition of The Choice is Edie's harrowing account of what transpired in her life leading up to Auschwitz, during her time in Auschwitz and being saved. I loved how Edie found the strength to go on, to live, to love, to find purpose and to tell her story. In under 200 pages, she tells her very personal story with grace, intellect, and courage.

What a thing to go through, what a thing to experience, what a thing to endure. This book had me thinking about Ma and her experiences in Auschwitz. To experience the unimaginable and find the strength to go on is a blessing. But many experienced survivors guilt. The pain of losing loved ones, the questioning why did I survive when they didn't is a heavy, heavy, burden to bear. The fact that Edie went on to be a psychologist who helped others face trauma shows her strength, her desire to help others, her belief in hope and looking forward while remembering the past.


Inspiring, moving, and powerful.

*This is the YA version of the author's book, The Choice: Embrace the Possible which details her experiences as Holocaust survivor and how she found strength in hope.

I write this review with tears rolling down my cheeks. The author of this book for me is a woman who truly is a warrior and survivor.

Edith Eger at just 16 years old was taken away from everything she knew, everything she loved and cared for and put into the worst place imaginable, Auschwitz. To read her harrowing story of how she somehow survived the horrors that she, her sister and many, many more witnessed is so emotional and heartbreaking. To know how many people didn’t survive the devastation that was Auschwitz, is unimaginable.

I feel the need to read this book and others like it, to hear the stories of those who lived through such a tragedy, to keep their stories and their fights alive and not forgotten. That those who tried and failed to oppress a nation did not in the end win.

A well written but very sad story that I definitely recommend.

Absolutely brilliant. I loved the fast writing pace. The author's tenacity and will to survive is so inspiring, and I really heard the message of Live your life to the full. I am telling everyone I know to read this book!
I am always surprised by new atrocities when I read books about the war and Auschwitz, when you think you have heard it all, along comes another horror someone had to suffer. This is no less chilling and horrific, but the author manages to capture her feelings; guilt, hope, love and the will to survive. This story will stay with me for a long time.

Very moving story seeing Hitler's Final Solution as it actually was.
The books I have previously read regarding the subject were often written third hand so it was interesting to see the camps as they were actually lived in.
Definitely worth reading to give some perspective as to how one Madman can cause so much pain and suffering.
However even with all of the things that happened survivors not only lived but went on to flourish.
Well written and engaging throughout.

This was a beautifully written memoir of Edith's life before, during & after her time as a pow in austwitchz & other concentration camps. It covered serious subjects delicately & made the reader see how life can change in the matters of minutes.
I have read a few books from survivors of austwitchz & the other concentration camps & this one is on par with the best selling ones. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in this subject or just want to know what life was really like in these horrific times

It’s 1944 and 16 year old Edith, a gymnast and dancer, is taken with her parents and sister, Magda, in a cattle cart to Auschwitz. Here they believe they are going work until the war ends. This belief is soon changed when Edith learns what happens in the buildings with the tall smoking chimneys.
What follows is a heartbreaking memoir of a young ballerina.

I have read a few books of this nature but this one really got to me, much more so than any other which I believe is due to this being the first hand experience of the author when she was such a young age. I just can't comprehend how Edith could have come through such unimaginable experiences and come out the other side as such an amazing and strong young Lady.
When I close my eyes thinking of this book all I can see are 3 terrified people huddled in their grey wool coats awaiting their fate.

This was such a haunting and powerful read, I am lost for words an how to express how deeply horrific but motivating this book is. I will be recommending to everyone as I feel it is a must read book.

Thank you NetGalley for the advanced reading copy.

Would I be able to survive such atrocities – and not be bitter? I doubt it. Even as a teenager, Edith Eger appreciated that good and evil co-exist in human nature; she survived by telling herself to survive today and be free tomorrow. Despite the suffering, she rises above the unbelievable and excruciating cruelty and starvation, clings to her sister who is in the same camp, dreams of her young man, Eric, and determines that she has choices.
It is gut-wrenchingly brutal in terms of loss, humiliation, fear (the scenes with Mengele are truly chilling), deteriorating health but shines with hope, love - and forgiveness. Edith’s return visit to Auschwitz many years after her internment must have been gruelling, but her description of meeting one of the guards (not at Auschwitz) is breathtakingly generous.
We must never let such monstrous obscenities happen again.

Wow Wow Wow, an amazing book, I have been to Auschwitz, it still haunts my thoughts when I think about the holocaust. Beautifully written with so much feeling. How can a young girl survive such horrors and manage to live her life despite the extreme traumas, starvation and cruelty that she lived through. Enjoy is not the correct word, I was more spellbound waiting to see if she managed to survive and whether any of her family and friends survived. Thank you for this book, it has reminded me of what we must never let happen again, one of a few books that has had a profound impact. Recommended.

I was lucky enough to have read Edith's original memoir, The Choice, which was extraordinary; this is no different and whilst, I think, it has been written for young adults in mind, I feel it can and should be read by all ages.

This sets out Edith's teenage life before, during and after the war ... her hopes and dreams that were dashed by the horrors inflicted but the power of the mind which, regardless of what is done to you, remains your own and something which you retain control over when you may have lost control of everything else.

I can't even begin to fathom how someone, who has experienced what Edith and countless others went through and witnessed, can come out the other side even close to being able to function back into society and then have the bravery and strength to re-live it by talking and writing about it in the hope that the atrocities committed are never repeated or forgotten? In my view, that takes a special type of person.

Memoirs like these are harrowing and disturbing to read BUT they are also stories of hope, strength, love; they are essential and a lot of lessons can and must be learned from them and I thank Edith, Ebury Publishing, Penguin Random House and NetGalley for enabling me to read and share my thoughts of this important and must-read book for all ages.

Beyond beautiful. So incredibly heartbreaking but full of positivity, hope, joy, strength, resilience and all the best parts of human beings. I have never read a book like this before… The fact that all of this happened is unbelievable for me.

Thank you to the author for sharing this heartbreak and hope.

If I could give 10 stars, I would. Outstandingly brave.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publisher for the ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

If you read a single book this year, read this one. Simply. Stunning.

Having read The Choice I was keen to read the author's new book. It did not disappoint. It was heart breaking but also uplifting. I cannot start to imagine the hardship and strength of character these people had. Another book that needs to be read by many to understand the importance of the Holocaust.

The memoir of Edith Eger, The Ballerina of Auschwitz, is a non-fiction account of a Jewish girl and her family who endured the horrors of World War II. It captures the stories of many Jewish families who lost their loved ones in the cruelty of the war, and who, like lost souls, struggled to find themselves amidst the devastation. Each page evokes a profound sense of pain, grief, and helplessness for the reader. This book is a memoir of their happiness before the war and the grief of life afterward. It is a heart-wrenching story of Dr. Edith Eger's life. This is a must-read for every generation, offering a glimpse into our history through the eyes of a real person who lived through it. I have no words to fully describe this book.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC and to Penguin Random House for bringing such a true story to life.

I'd not read the authors original book but am going through a "history" phAW.
This is a heartbreaking read, the things they went through. It is one of those stories that will stay with me for a long time.

Firstly, I have been to Auschwitz and seen the horror of what occurred and the results left behind. I have read lots of stories since visiting Auschwitz and have a different mindset reading these now. It is now 2024 and each time I read a book about this point in history, I am always transported back to when I first visited Auschwitz and I am always just as shocked reading the details every time. I believe it is always important to remember this point in history. Hence, we know what extreme hate looks like, what humanity is capable of, what humans are capable of and how we can avoid this ever happening again. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

http://thesecretbookreview.co.uk

I had not heard of the author's first book, 'THE CHOICE' nor of her story, so this book came to me fresh - and as a complete shock. It's the story of Edith Eger's life, but mostly of her experience of being taken to Auschwitz aged 16, of her time in the camps and how this has impacted her whole life. In this account, the original book has been condensed and reshaped potentially for young adult readers, which means that is a shorter and quickly readable account.

In spite of that, it is an emotional and harrowing read; yet beautifully written, evocatively re-creating the horrific times, the things people had to endure, and how, as the author puts it, "We can’t alter the past or control what’s coming round the next corner. But we can choose how to live now.”

Edith's choice, as she came back into the real world and her real life, was to become a psychotherapist, to help others, with her message and story of hope, resilience, and yes, choice. Choosing to bring good out of what could have become a downhill slope of depression and victimhood, the author recounts her personal story in order to help others to make the same choices of hope and help. And, too, to help next generations discover the truth of what occurred during the holocaust.

There are many accounts, both fiction and non-fiction, of those terrible times. This is one of the most powerful I have read, even though it is comparatively short and in some ways, quite matter-of-fact. This is what happened; this is what it caused; and this is the good that has somehow been able to come out of all of that.

To be read with hankie to hand, especially as Edith describes what happens to the love of her life.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the Advanced Reader Copy. This is my own honest review.