The Choice: Embrace the Possible

Edie has processed difficult inner work to become the woman she is, but she hesitates to return to Germany. Edie seeks advice from Marianne, who gives her complete freedom to choose what’s best for her: “You don’t have to prove anything to anyone else. You’re not required to go” (204). Relieved of her burden, Edie tells Béla that she will decline the offer. Béla, however, reacts differently: “If you don’t go to Germany, […] then Hitler won the war” (204). Edie realizes that saying no allows external circumstances to control her actions. The future lies before her; she has a choice, and an opportunity, to continue making peace with her past. She decides to go to Germany.

Edie’s mind reels on the train ride to Berchtesgaden. She wonders whether the people around her were once children spitting on her and whether they deny the past. Béla appeals to her bravery. Béla and Edie check into the hotel—the room where the former minister of propaganda slept—and Béla starts tapdancing and singing a satirical song about Germany. Edie, panicked and angry, leaves to take a walk outside. Instinctively, Edie chooses the path that doesn’t pass Hitler’s former residence, but she soon realizes that a dead man just controlled this decision. She finds her way to the ruins of the Eagle’s Nest and realizes, “I am walking on the same steps that Hitler once took, but he isn’t here now, I am. It is springtime, though not for Hitler. For me” (210-11). She releases her sorrow there on the mountainside.

The next day, in front of military chaplains, Edie explains the futility of revenge and how forgiveness serves the victim more than the perpetrator. No one can change the past, and no one achieves anything by wishing for a different past. Edie says, “I do not want [my trauma] to destroy the life that I clung to and fought for against all odds” (212). Edie can’t sleep that night, and her mind wanders to a former patient and his family. Edie realizes she bears guilt from her past, but she can’t identify its source. Edie then recalls a bitter old woman she met only once. Though this woman criticized everyone she met, Edie empathized with her past: The woman also lost her mother at age 16. Edie took her to her mother’s grave, instructing her to remove her shoes and stockings to feel the earth beneath her. Edie realizes what she must do next: She will return to Auschwitz.

Edie tries persuading Magda to accompany her to Auschwitz, but Magda refuses. Edie and Béla go to the Polish embassy for visas, but they reject westerners due to protests and the threat of Soviet interference. Edie explains that she is a survivor and begs for the opportunity to return to Auschwitz, and the clerk grants them a one-week visa. Edie’s resolve weakens on the train, but Béla encourages her again. As she processes whirring emotions, Edie reminds herself that this trip isn’t only for herself, but for all the people and future generations she hopes to impact—showing them how to heal, and how to teach others to heal.

Edie and Béla arrive at Auschwitz, joining a tour group. She sees the mathematical evidence of the atrocity’s magnitude, but even as someone who lived the nightmare, her comprehension falls short of the true horror. Edie recalls a memory she has suppressed for decades: Walking down the selection line toward Mengele, the killer asks Edie whether the woman next to her is her mother or sister. Impulsively, Edie responds, “Mother.” She regrets the word a moment later, and Mengele directs Ilona to the left, sealing her fate. Edie has forgiven Hitler, of all people, but now she must forgive herself. She once again chooses life and freedom: “I can accept that the more important choice is not the one I made when I was hungry and terrified, when we were surrounded by dogs and guns and uncertainty, when I was sixteen; it’s the one I make now” (232). While touring through the women’s camp, Edie selects an unremarkable stone from the ground. Traditionally, the Jewish respect the dead by placing a stone on their grave. Edie places the stone where her barracks once stood. Edie skips out of camp, feeling light and unburdened, and the sign that reads arbeit macht frei—“work will set you free”—at the camp entrance bears new significance: It represents not slave work, but the inner work of flourishing.