Edith Eger #3: Earning freedom

Kindness is a choice. Even in hell.

Reminder: This is article #3 on my special series about Edith Eger. Check previous posts if you want to know the whole story.

To survive is to transcend your own needs and commit yourself to someone or something outside yourself.

Edith Eger

Even in humanity's darkest moments, acts of kindness create invisible bonds that can return to save us when we need them most.

On the very night Edith entered Auschwitz and witnessed her mother's murder in the gas chambers, Dr. Josef Mengele forced the sixteen-year-old to dance for his entertainment. After her performance, Mengele rewarded her with a loaf of bread—precious as gold in a place where starvation was a weapon of extermination.

In that moment of hunger and despair, Edith made a choice that would define her character and, unknowingly, save her life:

"Dr. Mengele gave me a piece of bread after I was finished dancing and I shared the bread with the other girls," Edith recalls.

She couldn't have known that this precious act of kindness would return to save her life when the odds were stacked against her.

The Death Marches: When Freedom Seemed Impossible

In November 1944, as Soviet forces advanced toward Nazi territory, Edith and her sister Magda were evacuated from Auschwitz after surviving eight months in the most lethal Nazi concentration camp, where nearly one million people died. But their freedom remained distant, and the journey ahead would test the absolute limits of human endurance.

As Nazi Germany faced imminent defeat, the SS began evacuating concentration camps, forcing prisoners on what became known as "Death Marches"—brutal forced journeys designed to prevent liberation by Allied forces while destroying evidence of Nazi atrocities.

The conditions were deliberately lethal: prisoners marched long distances in bitter winter weather with little or no food, water, or rest. Many died from exhaustion, exposure, or starvation, while others were simply shot when they couldn't continue.

The Stairs of Death at Mauthausen

Edith and Magda were transferred to Mauthausen. Built next to a granite quarry, prisoners were forced to perform backbreaking labor cutting and carrying heavy stone blocks. The camp's most infamous feature was the Stairs of Death.

The Stairs of Death at Mauthausen represented a calculated instrument of extermination disguised as forced labor. Prisoners were forced to carry roughly-hewn blocks of stone – often weighing as much as 50 kilograms (110 lb) – up the 186 stairs, one prisoner behind the other. The system was designed with mathematical precision to ensure maximum suffering and death.

Stairs of Death at Mauthausen.

As Eger remembers, the domino effect was inevitable and deadly. As a result, many exhausted prisoners collapsed in front of the other prisoners in the line, and then fell on top of the other prisoners, creating a domino effect; the first prisoner falling onto the next, and so on, all the way down the stairs. This wasn't accidental—it was engineered brutality that turned human bodies into weapons against each other.

When Edith was forced to go up the 186 Stairs of Death and death was imminent, for some reason, she was the next on the line, but she was forgiven. No more killing for today.

Now, it was time for another march.

When Kindness Returned as Salvation

The months in Auschwitz and Mauthausen had left Edith malnourished and physically broken, but the additional hardships of the death march pushed her beyond the limits of human endurance. Her body was shutting down—every part of her numb, her legs refusing to carry her another step.

This was a death sentence. The Nazi guards had made the rules brutally clear: slow down, and they shoot you. Try to escape, and they shoot you. There was no mercy, no exceptions.

Edith had survived near-death experiences before—in Auschwitz, on the stairs of death at Mauthausen—but this time felt different. Her strength was completely gone. She could barely think through the fog of starvation and exhaustion. As her legs finally gave out, she prepared for the inevitable gunshot.

Instead, she felt arms lifting her.

Through her delirium, Edith realized she was being carried by Magda and the other girls. They had formed a human chair with their own starving bodies, supporting her weight as they continued the march.

One of the girls whispered to her: "You shared your bread with us. We don't forget that."

Think about this moment: everyone was at the brink of death. No one had energy left. They had been walking for days under extreme conditions with no food or shelter. And yet, these girls—barely alive themselves—chose to risk their own lives to save Edith.

As Edith herself describes this miraculous moment: "I was really slowing down and I thought I'm gonna be shot too... and the girls that I shared the bread with, they came and carried me so I won't die. Isn't that amazing. The girls to whom I previously gave the bread formed a human chair to carry me and saved my life."

The Nazis did everything they could to strip prisoners of their humanity, but they failed. As Edith discovered, true survival isn't just about staying alive—it's about remaining human. As she puts it:

In sharing her bread, Edith had planted seeds of humanity that bloomed into a life-saving miracle when she needed it most.

The girls who carried her during the death march weren't just repaying a debt—they were participating in a circle of compassion that demonstrates how even in humanity's darkest moments, the choice to be kind can create ripple effects that save lives across time and space.

This extraordinary story proves that hope, choice, and acts of compassion remain our most powerful tools for survival and transformation, even in the face of unimaginable adversity. In choosing kindness when she had almost nothing to give, Edith Eger discovered that what we share in our darkest moments can become the light that guides us home.

You always have a choice. Even in hell, kindness is there.

Last stop to freedom

After arriving at Gunskirchen, Edith was on the brink of death. The camp had no food, no shelter, no hope—only the final stages of Nazi extermination playing out in slow motion.

Confronted with starvation, she witnessed the unthinkable: cannibalism among desperate prisoners. The psychological horror was devastating, yet she faced a stark choice: eat something or die.

"Out of the trampled mud grows grass. I stare at the blades, I see their different lengths and shades. I will eat grass. I will choose this blade of grass over that one. I will occupy my mind with the choice. This is what it means to choose. To eat or not eat. To eat grass or to eat flesh. To eat this blade or that one."

But grass couldn't sustain life. Edith's body finally gave out, and she collapsed among a pile of corpses—some dead, some dying, some like her, barely alive.

"I lie out in the heavy air, my body entwined with strangers' bodies, all of us in a heap," she remembered.

This was the end. After surviving Auschwitz and the death march, Edith was about to become just another anonymous casualty.

When American forces liberated Gunskirchen on May 4, 1945, Edith appeared dead among the pile of bodies. Then, miraculously, one soldier noticed a slight movement—a hand twitching against the stillness of death.

That hand belonged to Edith Eger.

The soldier immediately called for medical help, pulling her from what would have been her grave. Her survival came down to that single moment—a barely detectable sign of life noticed by a compassionate liberator.

Edith was finally free. But at what cost?

Liberation had come at last. The Nazis were defeated, the war was over, and Edith could finally begin to imagine a new life. The statistics were staggering—of the 15,000 people deported from their hometown, she and her sister Magda were among fewer than six dozen survivors. Against impossible odds, they had endured.

But freedom came with a devastating price tag.

Edith's body was a testament to the horrors she had survived. At just 32 kilograms (70 pounds), she was skeletal. Her back was broken, and her lungs fought against typhoid fever, pneumonia, and pleurisy. Every breath was a struggle, every movement a reminder of what she had endured.

Yet the physical wounds, severe as they were, would prove to be the easier burden to bear.

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In our next post, we'll discover how Edith Eger's extraordinary experiences taught her to transcend her suffering. After years of battling her inner demons, she uncovered a profound truth: there's a crucial difference between pain and suffering—and understanding this distinction holds the key to breaking free from the past.

To learn more about Dr. Edith Eger's extraordinary journey, you can check my previous posts, read her powerful memoir "The Choice" and "The Gift," or listen to her interviews on various podcasts where she continues to share her wisdom about healing, hope, and human resilience.