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Short Summary
Main recommendation: Cultivate an inner life that no outside force can take away, choosing to honor yourself and make a difference each day even under the worst conditions. Using the story of Edith Eiger, a Holocaust survivor who danced for Dr. Josef Mengele at Auschwitz, Rabbi Jacobson argues that while suffering is universal, victimhood is optional.
Key Points
- Edith Eiger, a young Hungarian Jewish ballet student, was deported with her family to Auschwitz-Birkenau at age 16, where her mother was sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival.
- Before they arrived, her mother told her: nobody can take away from you what you put into your mind.
- That night, Dr. Josef Mengele summoned Edith to dance for him; she imagined herself dancing in the Budapest opera house to Tchaikovsky, and he was impressed.
- Mengele threw her a loaf of bread, which she shared with the other girls in her barrack rather than eating alone.
- Eiger survived the death march to Mauthausen with 2,000 Jewish prisoners, of whom only about 100 survived; four girls who received her bread carried her and saved her life.
- Eiger later became a therapist in California (where, per the talk, she was 94 at the time), and at 91 she published her best-selling book The Choice.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: The transcript gives one practical routine: each morning, ask yourself "who am I?" and answer with the Jewish response presented in the video, that you are a menorah and a source of light. Its concrete daily practice is to look in the mirror and choose to honor, treasure, and cherish yourself rather than expect "another creepy day," and to act to make a difference that day, because pain is universal and victimhood is optional. Eiger's therapy approach, as quoted, teaches patients this same mirror routine.
- The video cites the Hebrew phrase Ner Hashem nishmat adam ("the soul of a human being is a divine flame") from Proverbs.
- The speaker frames the answer to "who am I?" as being an ambassador of love, light, hope, healing, and redemption.
- Rabbi Jacobson notes that the biggest concentration camp may be in your own mind, and the key is in your pocket.
- The speaker says a loaf of bread in Auschwitz was worth more than $10 million, emphasizing the value of Eiger's generosity.
Bottom Line
Even when everything external is taken, a person still chooses their inner response, and that choice, as Eiger showed through small acts of generosity, can preserve dignity and even save others.
