This is the story of one, now a oldwoman, who survived one of the cruelest projects of the human mind, the Holocaust. Most people are familiar with the weight that this word carries, and we're aware of how our body trembles by pronouncing it. The very thought of what people were going through, just because they were different and posed a threat to someone because of that is scary. Someone decided to determine the parameters of inferiority and superiority of the human being.
I listened to the confession of this brave woman when she was a guest at the famous host Oprah Winfrey and recounted in tears what had happened to her. After so many years, the power of emotions with evoking them, unfortunately, has not weakened. Psychologists claim that the man got over something when he manages to retell the event, remembering, without tears in his eyes and chest pain. However, some people just don’t get over it, ever.
Listening to her story, all my problems suddenly became small.
A fourteen-year-old girl, a little dreamer full of life's joy, whose fantasy about big dreams was interrupted one moment, when she was sent with her mother and sister on a train traveling in one direction. On the way to the destination of hell, the mother said one sentence, wanting Edith to remember her forever: "Everything you put in your mind, no one can take away from you." Arriving at the destination, she stood in line with her mother and sister. A one example of a perverted mind, Dr. Mengele asked her at one point, if it was her mother or her sister, pointing a finger at her mother. The frightened girl with a harmless look, guided by her childish naivety, replied: "Mother." At that moment, Dr. Mengele, or the Angel of Death separated them and took the mother to the side that means death, and left the girl on the side that means life, only telling her that he would see his mother later. That later never came.
This was followed by new challenges she had had to face.
Because she loved to dance and was extremely talented, she was chosen to play for the Angel of Death to satisfy his need for fun, with his movements. With every performance of the game, she knew that every wrong step was actually a step closer to death. The Angel of Death did not like mistakes, but he loved the fear he caused in others and fed on him. That is why the fourteen-year-old girl Edith, every time she played, imagined, by closing her eyes, the audience in front of her and embarking on the role of a famous talented artist. She would imagine the audience, the applause, and the boyfriend with who she was immensely in love, watching her with enthusiasm.
She danced for him, she danced for life and she danced for love.
After being released and leaving the concentration camp, she learns that she is the only surviving member of her family. There was still hope that the boy she was in love with was also alive, but the knowledge that he had passed away, the day before the official proclamation of release, hit her hard. She fell into a severe form of depression where she dealt with an anxious feeling of guilt, due to the fact that she was the only survivor. Many times felt unworthy of life.
She didn't speak for years, not knowing how to deal with her mind. As time went on, she got worse, not finding a motive to continue with her life, until one moment when her mother's famous sentence began to haunt her again. "Everything you put in your mind, no one can take away from you." There she found her lost strength again and dared to return to the crime scene that took her soul. She went back there to forgive herself, close the door of death, and open the door to life.
Today, she has a wonderful family with great-grandchildren who love her immensely.
She has become synonymous with the struggle for freedom, and inspiration to many by its following sentence: "The biggest concentration camp is in your mind, and the key is in your pocket."
In the moments when you are facing a difficulty in your life, go back to this story. I'm sure it will give you immense strength.
Life is not what happens to us, but what we make of it, because we ourselves are not aware of how strong we are until we come to a situation where strength is our only choice.
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