Edith Eva Eger is a clinical psychologist living in La Jolla. She is a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Eger was a Hungarian Jew, the youngest of three daughters, residing in a town called Kosice in what is modern-day Slovakia.

Her father was a tailor; her mother, a civil servant. In March 1944 Hungarian Nazis came to her house and arrested her family.

Before the round-ups, Eger trained as a gymnast for the Hungarian Olympic team, but was not allowed to participate because of her religion.

She danced for Dr. Joseph Mengele to the Blue Danube Waltz. ^[1]

Shortly after the war, Eger met and married a fellow Hungarian Jew who had been a partisan, anti-Nazi fighter.

The young family moved with their infant daughter to the United States to escape communist rule in Hungary.

^[1]

Dr. Eger holds a faculty appointment at the University of California—San Diego, and also serves as a consultant for the U.S.

Army and U.S.

Navy in resiliency training and the treatment of PTSD.