The Daily Stoic - Holocaust Survivor Dr. Edith Eger on the Gift of Forgiveness

Episode Date: June 12, 2021

On today’s special episode of the podcast, Ryan talks to Dr. Edith Eger about her book The Choice: Embrace the Possible  which details her time at the Auschwitz concentration camp, the importance of feeling traumatic experiences in an effort to heal them, how suffering should lead us to strength rather than victimization, why forgiveness is a gift that you must choose to give to yourself, and more. A native of Hungary, Edith Eva Eger was just a teenager in 1944 when she experienced one of the worst evils the human race has ever known. As a Jew living in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, she and her family were sent to Auschwitz, the heinous death camp. Her parents were sent to the gas chambers but Edith’s bravery kept her and her sister alive. Dr. Eger is a practicing psychologist and a specialist in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder. She is also the author of the bestselling memoir The Choice: Embrace the Possible and The Gift: 12 Lessons to Save Your Life.Beekeeper’s Naturals is the company that’s reinventing your medicine with clean, effective products that actually work. Beekeepers Naturals has great products like Propolis Spray and B.LXR. For just $5 shipping, you can get a two-week supply of B. Immune Propolis Throat Spray for FREE. Just go to beekeepersnaturals.com/STOIC or use code STOIC at checkout to claim this deal.Ladder makes the process of getting life insurance quick and easy. To apply, you only need a phone or laptop and a few minutes of time. Ladder’s algorithms work quickly and you’ll find out almost immediately if you’re approved. Go to ladderlife.com/stoic to see if you’re instantly approved today.KiwiCo believes in the power of kids and that small lessons today can mean big, world-changing ideas tomorrow. KiwiCo is a subscription service that delivers everything your kids will need to make, create and play. Get 30% off your first month plus FREE shipping on ANY crate line with code STOIC at kiwico.com. Policygenius will help you find the insurance coverage you need. You can save 50% or more by comparing quotes. And when your life insurance policy is sorted out, you’ll know that your family will be protected if anything happens. Just go to policygenius.com to get started.***Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: http://DailyStoic.com/signupFollow us:Twitter: https://twitter.com/dailystoicInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/Facebook: http://facebook.com/dailystoicYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoicFollow Dr. Eger:Homepage: https://dreditheger.com/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dredithegerTwitter: https://twitter.com/dreditheger1/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.editheger/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke podcast early and add free on Amazon music download the app today Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoke each weekday We bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics Something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage justice up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time.

Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wundery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward.

Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stove podcast. Today's guest is someone who will call them a late bloomer, but their long germination is to the benefit of all of humanity. I'm talking about Dr. Edith Egger, the author of this wonderful book, The Choice, embraced the possible. She was born in 1927, to Hungarian Jewish parents, and if you understand your history, won't surprise you to hear that she survives the Holocaust and then flees Hungarian communism after she survives. Ends up in Opasso, Texas, is a mother,

and it's only at age 50 that she goes back to school to become a clinical psychologist. She's introduced to the work of Dr. Victor Frankl, who we talk about here a lot in the podcast, Man Search for Meaning, Yes to Life, one of the founders of Logotherapy. But Dr. Egres book is incredibly moving, incredibly inspiring. What she's saying, her choice is actually at the root of stoicism as well. She talks about epictetus in today's interview. Epictetus says, we don't control what happens, but we choose how we respond, right?

Her book is all about how you respond to the trauma, to the pain, to the suffering, to the difficulty, as well as the good luck and the fortune and the joy that life provides to you, you choose how you respond. Please read the choice. I sell this in the painted porch because it's one of my all-time favorite books. Her new book, The Gift, I just ordered, I'm very excited about. Her TED Talk is also incredible. It was truly an honor to do this interview with Dr. Edith Egger. Please read

this book. And I think it's extra urgent today, given the rise in anti-semitism. That's why we have to care about people. That's why we have to stand up for people, even when we disagree with them, why we have to protect the vulnerable, why we can't allow violence and discrimination in hatred to run rampant, why we have to always love, always accept, always protect, always preserve, that done studies recently on how many young people have even heard of the Holocaust, how many young people even know that it happened. One of the worst things that humans have ever done to each other, perhaps the worst thing that humans have ever done to each other, perhaps the worst thing that humans have ever done to each other, and it's already slipping from our collective

memory because we don't want to think about it. We don't want it to be true. We want to talk about what's pleasant, we want to talk about what's current, and what we risk tragically is repeating history, and this is a thing that as she closed our interview with, something like the Holocaust can never be allowed to happen again. And as Marcus really says, we commit injustice when we allow injustice to happen, right? You can commit injustice, he says, by doing nothing, I firmly believe that. And that's why we have to choose, as the book says, we have to choose to be good, choose

to be great, choose to follow that Stoic virtue, and this interview should hopefully help give you some clarity there. So here's my interview with Dr. Edith Egger. I have so much stuff I wanted to ask you, one of my favorite parts in the choice. You talk about your son who is born with some disabilities, but you have this

Conversation with you in the doctor where he tells you that your son is gonna be whatever you make him Into being and that if you push him too hard, it's a problem, but if you don't push him enough, it's a problem Oh, I'm so brilliantly. Oh, you are so brilliant. I love you. I love you. You're adopted. You're adopted. So how did I, I'm curious then, given what you experienced,

how, how did that shape your parenting strategies? I imagine you would have two impulses. One, you would want to hold them close and never let them feel even the slightest bit of pain. And on the other, it might make you, I don't want to say insensitive, but it could be hard to calibrate what's normal and healthy given, you know, what you witnessed

and what you experienced. How did you think about that? Well, I can tell you that this is a country of second opinion. And I was told in Texas that my son may never make it to high school. And I better look for a school for retarded. I don't use that word anymore. And that's when I asked where do I get a second opinion. So I arrived

in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins and then Dr. Clark, beautiful neurologist, told me, give me your son for a week. And that's what I did and came back a week later and he said, me down and he said, a reclator, and he said, me done, and he said, your son is not retarded. He's got the bedroom eyes, he's got the clumsiness and everything that comes with it. But he's going to be what you make of him, and that's when I began to shake. Me! began to shake me. And he says, he's going to need speech therapy, occupational therapy, this and the other. And how do I pay you? He says, give me $10. This is in 1916. I dropped out of school and my son, John, graduated as a top student, top 10 students, not 10 percent, top 10 students from the University of Texas. If you go to the University of Texas, my name, John Eger, is there. He is my hero. He was born in 1956.

He also picked up a new one called Sarkoidosis when he was with his father, revisiting Czechoslovakia. That's where my grandfather's from. Really? Yes. I don't know exactly. He wasn't Jewish, but he ended up in a displaced persons camp, all the same, and he immigrated here and met my grandmother. You come from God, blood. Good for a living. Do you eat the food called Trapanka, called Hallushki? I remember eating a lot of sausage.

A lot of sausage, exactly. Yeah, Hungarian serve very good sausage too. And I do the first bone child. I'm the oldest, yes, I have one younger sister. You're the one who's a Nobel Prize winner. Very responsible. And if you marry a firstborn, you're going to have two bosses. And you may have some power struggle. I married a youngest child, so we balance each other out.

That's right, you did well. You know how we call the youngest child? What? Charming manipulators. That's exactly what I would say with all kindness, that is a great description of my wife. So never argue with her. Yes.

So I had an interesting question. So I've, I'm fascinated. So you were born in 1927. Have you thought about who the oldest person you met as a child was? So like, I'm fascinated with how far back in history, your life connects with. Does that make sense?

Yes, and the person is the wife of President Roosevelt. Oh, Eleanor Roosevelt. You met Eleanor Roosevelt? Eleanor Roosevelt just a little bit, but anything I wanted to learn, I wanted to learn about the woman who created her own identity and not the brother being jealous of life or anything like that. She became my hero. She still is.

So she was born in 1884. So that's incredible. So and she obviously met Theodore Roosevelt and so I'm just fascinated with the way that lives touch other lives and how history is a thread of people shaking hands with each other from different different periods, different experiences. Beautiful, beautiful Alia. I also know Tova, who did Elano Roosevelt on Broadway. And she did a beautiful job, beautiful, a one-woman show many, many years ago. And now she's doing Dr. Ruth.

And she's up there now with Dr. Ruth in New York. And some people call me the mix between Dr. Ruth and Joan Rivers because I tell people to grow up. Go grow up, you know. I want to tell them, you want to be a baby or a big girl, because when you're a baby, you're sitting in the back of the car and you mess around and someone is driving the car. You want freedom, no responsibility, but now,

do you want to be driven or do you wanna be the driver? So let me ask, it was part of what inspired you about Eleanor Roosevelt, was that she, like you, was what inspired you about Eleanor Roosevelt was that she like you was was what we would call a late bloomer. You know, she really didn't hit her stride as an activist. Yet, yes, she was FDR's wife, but I would almost argue that her impact as a public figure began after his polio diagnosis. She, which I don't know how old she was, but I'd probably around 50 years old. Yeah, I am a late bloomer too. When I was 40, my supervisor asked me to go get a doctor that then I told him it's impossible.

By the time I get it, I'm gonna be 50 and he said, you'll be 50 anyway. So I tell women now, maybe you want to go to law school because mothers make very good lawyers, very good judges and go, go, go, go, go back to school. Yes. Well, you're certainly the oldest person that I've had the privilege of talking to zoom on. So this is quite a treat for me. I am older but not old. Could you imagine? Could you imagine as a young girl that this technology would exist? I mean, isn't this incredible? Never ever imagined that I would ever be in 93 as young as I am today.

It's all about your attitude and it's all about numbers will happen anyway. The chronological numbers doesn't bother me at all. I've been 94 in September and I feel very, very much alive. And I hope to be alive for a while, writing another book with my daughter and on recipes. And hopefully that's going to be also a SAP for school children, so they would really take education seriously. And so, I mean,

I mean, is it, Seneca famously said that far too many old people have nothing to show for their, their years, but their age? I think what's incredible about you is, is not that you're 93, but that at 93, you have experienced what you've experienced.

Your life has had many seasons of experiences. And a much better Nassarans woman. And I think women can do that. And the lady that in life, the better because they can really pick and choose the attitude that you are going to work with, whether they are going to stop doing one thing or give up one thing, but when you give up anything, you have to replace it with something else.

So you have to really check out your priorities and life and think about your thinking because what you think you create. That idea of thinking about your thinking, that's sort of the core of stoic philosophy, which I talk about. It's also the core of Buddhism, but it also strikes me that what you talk about in the choice is really thinking about what you're thinking that even something as terrible as Auschwitz, you have the ability to determine what you think about it. You might be powerless in that you're there, but you can decide what it means to you.

It is very important for me to tell you that I found love and God in our shmits because I was able to look at the gods, that they were more imprisoned than I was, that they were brainwashed, they were brainwashed to look at me and calling me, they're calling me cancer to society. And I was stored in Auschwitz. I'm never going to get out to feel alive. And I was able to stand hate to pity and feeling sorry for the gods that they would have a congen, and they would have to pay for what they're doing now, putting children into the oven without even guessing them. But that doesn't come naturally, right? You have to really work to get yourself there or is that how your disposition just is?

I think I wanted to live so badly and I was in love. I was in love, you see, and he told me I have beautiful eyes and I have beautiful hands. So, you know, in the kettle-kart my mom told me and I called that all the time, and I go to school. My mother told me, we don't know where we're going, we don't know what's going to happen. Just remember, no one can take away from you what you put here in your own mind. So that's why I tell young children to please stay in school, even though God gave us temptation. I'm really tempted to eat up the whole Hungarian chocolate cake, but I have to learn to be a good mommy to me, because dependency breeds depression. There was no mommy there for me.

I had to learn is what my belief, master told me, that look at God from inside out. And I learned to change my thinking. And never, never even imagine that I am not going to get out of here. When I get out of here, I'm going to see my boyfriend. When I get out of here, I show him my eyes, my hands. You know, when I get out of here, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow is where I was, always. Tomorrow was really truly a wonderful friend to me. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show.

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Are you familiar with James Stockdale, the prisoner of war in Vietnam? Maybe not. Yeah, he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam? Maybe not. He was a prisoner of war in Vietnam and he studied stoicism and so he was thinking of the work of epictetus there as he was being tortured. And I'd be curious what your take on this is because what he was saying and obviously not having experienced it, I have no idea. But he was saying that there's this tension because he said the optimists were the ones

that didn't make it out because the optimist always thought, I'm going to be home by Christmas. I'm going to be home by summer and it never happened. So he said, you can't be an optimist, you have to be a realist. But at the same time, you have to have this unflinching belief that you are going to survive. And if you do, you will turn this into the best thing that ever happened to you. See, I had to be at that better end, since it's in my tento. Yeah.

So one of them was in a kind of a fetal position. Why me? Why me? Curse in God. Country, you name it. And then the other one, it was just the most amazing, complete and delicious of this one and told me, hey doc, I'm sitting in a wheelchair and I can see my children's eyes much closer and I can also see the flowers. And I'm sitting there with a white coat, a lab coat, Dr. Eager, Department of Psychiatry.

And I feel like the biggest imposter, because I went to school, I went to school, I went to school, and made me realize that I cannot take them further than I have gone myself. And that's when I decided to go back to our shrits. I wish I could meet those two Vietnam veterans that I decided to go back to the lions, then look at the lion in a face. And I went to my sister and I asked her to come with me and she told me I'm an idiot. And not only an idiot, but also I am a masochist.

That what do I want to do when I'm already in America and I can be a good Yankee Doodle then, and believe me, that's the work I do today, because you can't heal what you don't feel. So don't medicate, don't medicate, grieve, and I'm so privileged to teach at the university, the wonderful psychiatric people who are not medicating grief, but I also can tell you that I also worked with a wonderful girl from Yugoslavia and together we were keeping each other alive, but she told me that we were going to be liberated by Christmas,

and Christmas came, and she died the next day. That kind of rigid thinking, all or nothing, didn't work at all. But I knew who was going to die. I had this ability to look at the eyes, the look at the face of people who just gradually gave up. Or they even touched the world wire and they got electrocuted. Or they touched the garden, they were shocked.

You know, they took my blood. And one time they asked me about getting my arm so they can take my blood and I asked why are you taking my blood? And he said to aid the German soldiers, can win the war and take over the world, especially America. So I couldn't yank my arm, but you know what I said And I, you know, and so I never allowed them to get to me. And people say, you make me angry. Nobody makes me angry. People have as much are angry, angry or whatever, any feelings. I do not allow people to ever murder my spirit. My wife says that. She says, I've said, you know, you're frustrating me.

And she said, I can't make you frustrated. That's all on you. I have an anxiety and no, you don't. You're thinking anxiously. And yet, yes, I picked at this was certainly right, that is not what happening, it's what you do with it. Yeah, Marcus really is in meditations, he writes, he said, today I escaped anxiety and he says, no, I discarded it because it was inside me, he's, I let it go. And I think that's a beautiful way to say it. So what I say that revenge gives you very temporary satisfaction,

but forgiveness is the freedom, is the gift that I choose to give to myself. And I think that is a big, big difference that I am not a victim. I was not at all ever at here to be a victim. I was victimized. It's not who I am. It's not my identity. It's what was done to me. And I think there is a big difference. I refuse to be a victim. It's not who I am. It's not my identity. Well, let me ask you about the forgiveness thing because this is something I'm struggling with. Obviously, it's not at the scale of what happened in the middle of the 20th

century. But I was talking to a friend about this. It's been hard for me, you know, in America, COVID-19, this horrendous pandemic, and one sense it was unpreventable, and then another sense, the immense proportion of the tragedy was preventable, because human beings, people, we both, we all know, you know, decline to take it seriously, decline to think about their obligations to each other. I'm having a little bit of trouble going back to life and being able to forget, you know, that certain people couldn't wear a mask or certain people didn't wanna follow protocols.

Or certain people said, you know, I'm young, this doesn't affect me, this is, you know, it'm young, this doesn't affect me. This is, you know, it's only old people that are dying. You know, how do you, how do you forgive and forget the immense callousness and selfishness that human beings are capable of? No, I never forget what happened. But I like you to maybe pick up a book that you may

have it in your place by Max Weber, by Max Weber, Capitalism and the Protestant ethics. Okay. He refers to the Jewish people as pariah, Jews are the pariah. See, what happened Germany didn't win the war. And anytime a country suffers economically, they have to have a scapegoat. Mm-hmm. A carter, you know, let's go cure carter, that's what happened. In Iran, but I think it's very, very important to know that while you're playing, you're still a child. Children playing, you made me angry.

You did this to me. 4 o'clock in the morning in Auschwitz, I didn't know what's going to happen next. I didn't know whether I'm going to end up in a gas chamber. I didn't know, and that's a very difficult place to be, that you don't know what's going to happen next. We didn't know when we took a shower, whether it gets old or there is going to come out. Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. But I knew that I'm going to do everything possible to take care of my sister.

And all we had was each other then. So you had to go beyond the Mimi Me and commit ourselves to each other and form a family of inmates. All we had was each other then and all we have is each other now. So when you come out of Auschwitz and you go back to your life and then your life is disrupted again

by the sort of tyranny of communism. How I guess I'm just curious, how do you not carry resentment or anger, not just at the perpetrators, but at the bystanders or the indifferent population that allowed something like this to happen. I guess that's what I'm struggling with. something like this to happen. I guess that's what I'm struggling with. Yeah, I think, you know, there is no forgiveness without rage. You gotta go through the value of the shadow of death, but don't get stuck in there.

Some people are chronically angry, because the anger somehow keeps them from really facing and go through that pain, but not to get stuck in there, not to be a victim. So you're in a dark tunnel but you're going towards the light that you have to have an arrow that you follow. No, no, no, don't cover garlic with chocolate. It doesn't taste good. You know, don't try to forget things as I did.

I went totally underground when I came to America because I didn't want to be a weirdo. I felt like a weirdo anyway. So if you ask me who are you and I would say, who do you want to be, I think I became a very successful schizophrenic. And you tell a story about meeting one of the guards, right? Afterwards and the feeling of love that you experience

when you held their hands. That just struck me as almost superhuman. And that was actually Corritine Bullen, who met the guy who was responsible for her sisters, that and that's where I learned about forgiveness from Corritine Boulin. She's my hero, the hiding place, you may have her book there. And I think that it's very, very important not to run from the past or forget it or fight it, but recognize no matter what happened, I made it.

I was very suicidal after I was liberated, I was lying in a curse, I could hardly breathe. And I realized the parents are not coming back. My boyfriend was killed a day before liberation. It's important to be realistic rather than idealistic because when the idealist doesn't get what they're looking for, they can become very sarcastic, very cynical. The Hungarians can be very cynical, very sarcastic. I like philosophical humor, not sarcasm or cynicism. Yeah, General Madness says that cynicism is cowardice, which I think is a beautiful way of expressing it. It's a way, it's a mechanism to hide from life. Yeah, that's very sad. Very, very sad. So you read a lot of books,

the books that you carry. That's beautiful. That's lovely. That's lovely. You really are lovely, that's lovely. You really are, are maybe wondering, well, what is my truth? Well, I, my grandmother gave me a copy of Victor Frankl's A Man Search for Meaning as a young man. And that book opened my eyes as it did for you. And I'm just curious about what your experiences with him were like. My experience with him was wonderful. When I met him, he told me to meet him in San Diego at the International University.

And this was the time when I was studying myself, philosophies, and then my daughter was with me. And as she spoke with the philosophers, I said to my daughter, it's funny. He was not mentioning Kyrgyzga God, not that I gave a damn about Kirgogard, but you know what happened afterwards? I thought I had a Pope with me, but the Pope was insecure. He wanted to know whether he made any mistake. And I said, no, it was lovely.

And my daughter said, remember, Mom, you said that I wanted to kill my daughter. I'm going to kick her under that German mentality that you have to do everything right. Imagine, I didn't give a damn about Ketgega. You know, I am a video pope, a little me, Viktor Fanko. So that's my birth experience. And he actually, I am in one or two books too, that I became truly a very, very ambitious logo therapist. I am a diplomat in logo therapy. And I did a keynote address on his nine-year birthday.

And I can tell you that Victor Funkall has a great deal to do with where I am today, with me, and my voice, that he guided me to go back to that lion's den, look at the lion in a faith and reclaim my innocence. So when I went back and I was ready to come out, I saw a man with a uniform. And for a moment I thought, I'm in a camp with a Nazi and the realization that I had the blue American passport in my pocket. That was an amazing experience that I'm not papai. I am me and it's so key to speak English with an accent and I don't have to give up my true self for some kind of a formula that actually was the best thing I ever done. And that's what I do in my work now.

You revisit the places where you've been, we go through the grieving, feeling, and healing. You cannot heal what you don't feel. Got a quick message from one of our sponsors here and then we'll get right back to the show. Stay tuned. How does that work because today it seems like there's a lot of focus on, you know, trigger warnings and safe spaces and trying to protect people from pain. I'm not discounting their trauma, but it seems to be that our response is, if you have trauma, there's something wrong with you,

and now we have to be very sensitive, or you will break. That seems the opposite of what you and Dr. Frankl were talking about. So I think that I will tell you, the more you suffer, the stronger you become, because it's much easier today than to live. And I was very suicidal after I was liberated, not while I was there.

But when I realized my parents are not coming back, the reality hit me. And I know, I know, I know that some voice was talking to me and told me that if I die, I will never find out what happens. And it's better to be full something than against something. And that's how I joined the Healing God's profession. Healing is different from curing. So the doctors and I work together and they do the curing and realize that some people need medication because they have something too much or too little love and it's very important to have a very good physical, to have a good, good, good testing of everything from top to toe because talking therapy is not enough many times. I think the thing that struck me most about

man's search for meaning was he has this paragraph in the book where he says, you know, we ask what is the meaning of life? And he says, that's wrong. Life is asking us what meaning we are going to create with our actions. And not only that, but I think that it's not that you can buy, it's a discovery. And I like to call Auschwitz as an opportunity to discover the part in you that no Nazi could

touch my spirit. They could throw me in a gas chamber any minute. I had no control over the external, but they could never touch the spirit that I bring you. That somehow I found hope in hopelessness. And there is a gift in the COVID. Don't go back, have a new beginning. Have a read.

People say they want things to go back to normal and normal is what caused this. It shouldn't go back to normal. That would be a rejection of the meaning of the suffering that all these people experienced, ourselves included. No normal, no, there is no such thing. Don't go back, have a new beginning. And especially if you are in a marriage,

you may be able to tell your husband that you would like to go back to school, you know, because when I told my husband, I want to go back to school and get a doctor, he said, I don't want to be introduced as Mr. and doctor. You see, but you know, I didn't listen to my husband. You got a risk. You got a risk and it's okay. It's okay because I'm not a people pleaser anymore. There is something in me and that's what happened, you know, when we fled to Vienna and we were going to join the

train to go to Israel, where we put everything there, clothes for my daughter, for five years and everything. And I had a friend in Israel who told me not to come to Israel now because they are in a desert. And if I had the opportunity to go to America, and that's what I told my husband, and he went out to the train station, they called his name, and he came back. And that's how I came to America in 1949, and that everything go and we came totally penniless.

I came to America and then have six dollars to get off the boat and that the Red Cross gave me six dollars. And you can go to the William Boomer, taught me Medical Center and see how much money I gave, not money, but the time I gave for the six dollars that they gave me when I came to America. So I don't know anything to anyone. I always pay my bills right away. And I think it's very, very important to discover the real you. And I think when you're discovering the real you, one of the things that was most

moving to me in the book was, I believe you met like a white supremacist or a racist or something, and you were talking about trying to find your shared humanity with that person and discovering that you yourself, a victim of so much hatred and discrimination, that you had to find the bigot inside you because we all have one. That's beautiful. You know, I had this 14-year-old and and he told me in Texas, he's a bootboy. And I know nothing about boots, of course. And I just acknowledged it. But then he got up, and he took his elbow, and he said, hey, Doc, it's time for the

America to be white again. And I'm going to kill all the Jews and all the N-Word and all the Chinkos in a Texas action, all the Chinkos and all the Mexicans. All the Mexicans. So if I would have reacted, see when you react you don't think. If I would have reacted, I would have taken that boy, I would have dragged him to the corner, I would have told him, I'll tell you, talk to me like that, because my mother went to the gas chamber, but I did go to God and I asked,

what do I do? And God told me, find the bigot in you. And I said, that's impossible, now. I came to America, Penelope. I went to the bathroom, one of whom said, call, and I joined the NACP. I marched with Martin Luther King and God said, find the bigger in you.

And I created the atmosphere that I do today to people that they can feel any feelings without the fear of being judged. And I said, tell me more. He never knew who I was. He never knew a thing about my history. But you see, I did the mommy thing, but I'm pretty old-fashioned, that the mom cannot make a boy into a man. It takes a man.

So I referred him to a man with gray hair. Someone who's been around. And so that's my experience with the white supremacist boy. And this is unfortunately that happened January 9th in America January 6th. I'm sorry. And when I saw someone wearing a shirt, 6 million was not enough. How did you feel? How do you think I felt after Nazi Germanyutsche Germany and Communist Russia, that history has a tendency to repeat itself? Does it concern you? You know, there's that expression when the wolves of hate are loose, no one is safe. Does it concern you that that kind of rhetoric and

violence and distrust and misinformation and dehumanization. Does it concern you that that is spreading again? I mean, in America of all places? Do you have the book by Adorno, the authoritarian personality? No. And he created the California F scale, F stands for fascist. And he tells you that small town USA is ready for fascism. It comes from Harvard. Yeah.

That people don't question authority. And that's the worst thing you can have is ignorance. And then you blindly adhere to authority. You have to question authority and assign the shame and guilt to the perpetrator. And that's what I did when I went back to our ship. And you also have to understand that we are all here in this together, that we're all human beings.

The Stoics talk about this idea of sympathy, that we're all part of this large, you know, sort of cosmic hole. They say, what's bad for the B, or what's bad for the hive is bad for the B. And I think we're losing our sense of collective humanity. And that's what puts us in danger of committing in terrible injustices against other human beings. You know, it's wonderful what you're saying to be for something rather than against. And I think that is so important because we've never been as divided as we are now.

And I know that you are the ambassador. I'm gonna call you the ambassador. Look at all the books behind you. And are you letting people know that the Nazis burned the books? Sure. And what's that quote where they burned books? Eventually they will burn people. Yeah, the people were objects.

You see, killing the Jews was the goal and have a world without the Jews. But that little Jew, that little Jew Albert Einstein came to America and changed the history of World War II. Yes, the irony of the defeat of the Nazi war machine and the Japanese war machine is that it was driven in many ways by the talents and brilliance of the people that they exiled, primarily to England and America.

And I think we are in danger of losing sight of that And I think we are in danger of losing sight of that. With today, with our fear and rejection of immigrants, with our demonization of poor people, this is where ideas come from. This is the lifeblood of America, and it always has been. You know, Churchill is my hero. We're gonna fight. Yes, Churchill is my hero. Wonderful, wonderful man. When I was in London, thank God,

I was interviewed by the CBS and many people. It was so wonderful for me to say that I love Churchill. And I loved Eisenhower and I was in Auschwitz when they planned the Normandy invasion. Without the Normandy invasion I wouldn't be here with you. A mother of three, a grandmother of five, and seven great-grandson, and one of them, just one year old, oh, twin. Wow. That's beautiful. Isn't it? It is. So that's why I am never going to retire, So, that's why I am never going to retire and I'm going to do everything in my power to let you know that you are the ambassador and keep on reading the books and selling the books and having people like me once a week or once, whenever you can, so people can really

exchange the lots of things. Well, I'm truly honored and this is a rare, a rare treat for me. I think something I've been thinking about, you know, people are so ambitious, right? They want to, they want to be famous. They want to be rich, they want to be powerful. But really, as successful as your books are, nothing will match the multi-generational impact that you just talked about, that you had children, who had grandchildren, and great children.

That is the impact that we have. That's the message that we leave to the future is the children we have and how we raise those children and what values we give them. And you know what? My books are on the living room table of my great grandson. So please keep having the books out

and let people know that the books were unfortunately gotten rid of during the Nazis and you're here to let them know what happens when good people do very, very bad things. And which was something that is not comparable to anything, because never in a history of mankind, such as scientific and systematic inhalation of people existed. I watched the other day, the Nürnberg trial. Oh, it was so brilliantly done. It's incredible to think how little these things can start, right? And I think that is the

other message from the Second World War that this horrible tragedy, although it has sort of systemic sort of systemic roots, that it's really springs from almost the single-handed hatred and insanity of a single individual. That one person can put all of those events in motion. And I heard a great quip at the beginning of the pandemic before we were, you know, before we were quite sure of the origins. They said, if you don't believe an individual can change the world, talk to the person who ate a bat, right?

When we thought that a bat had spread coronavirus to all these people, you know, Hitler is proof that a horrible individual can change humanity for the worse. But Churchill and DeGal, are proof that an individual can redeem history, can change history for the better. And I think that's the choice, right?

Are you gonna be a hero or a villain? And that's the one thing that we decide. No one gets to choose that for us, we decide. I was told that there was a Jewish guy in Czechoslovakia and he didn't have any money to go to Vienna to take a test to become an artist and go to school. So he walked to Vienna and he begged them to take the test and They allowed him and next to him was Hitler

Yeah, the different name and and Hitler flunked and he made it and he had tremendous guilt that if he would have flunked that if he would have flung gun, then we wouldn't have the Hitler who became a Hitler. And he had tremendous guild, survivors guild, that Hitler really wanted to be an artist. He was a beaten child.

And if you want to read any books, you read Swiss psychiatrists, Elis Miller, and she is amazing. And the book, especially for your own good has to do with Hitler, having a terrible childhood beaten by his father, and that had agreed you to do, that he was never a love's child. And, you know, there is a difference between what I believe, but there is a difference of what kind of life you lead. See, I am very interested in having faith, which is very different from belief. Okay, what you believe, I want to know what kind of life you lead, because words can be very cheap commodities. My friend, Steven Pressfield, he's a great writer,

and he jokes that it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than to pursue his dreams as an artist. And I think that that's true. We can be so afraid of what our calling is. We can be afraid to be vulnerable and real. And Hitler chose hatred and destruction and pain and nihilism. Blame, blame. Yes, and blame. Why do you blame? You still had child. And he was an infant. I mean, when you watch some of his tantrums or you see some of the things When you blame, you still had child. And he was an infant. I mean, when you watch some of his tantrums or you see some of the things that he would say to his, yes, right, he's a small child who's in charge of an enormous army.

And we see how destructive that turned out to be. That's what happened when a country suffers economically. That's what happened with the Ayatollah. Let's go kill Carter and so on. I think it's very very important that you are an ambassador. Well thank you. This is this is a complete honor and a treat and I am I am glad that you are here to still talk to us. This is an incredible journey that you've been on and I respect all your contributions and your message. It made a huge difference in my life and I know it's made a huge difference in the lives of so many people. So it must have been a very dark time there in Auschwitz.

So it must have been a very dark time there in Auschwitz. But the light for all of us is that you persevered because now we get to bask in that light. So don't call me shrink, call me stretch. And today I help people to stretch your comfort zone because this is... In your heart, make your heart bigger. Yes. You help people stretch to make their hearts bigger.

That's it. And I have my cherished wound, and you have your cherished wound. And don't try to run from the past, face it, recognizing that life is difficult, life is not easy. You can make it easier, but it's not easy. So if you don't change, you don't grow. There is a Latin saying, I studied Latin. it let in. Temporamutantur, times are changing, at Nusmutamu Rinilius, times are changing

and we are changing with the times. Don't go back, use this time out to regroup, to re decide that there is no going back, there is a new beginning. When people asked me, did you love your husband? And I told them, I was very, very lonely, I was very skinny, and most of all, I was very hungry, and someone gave me Hungarian salami, and that's how I got married. But then they say, what you went back to him, I said no. And I went again, I was a woman to a parent.

And then we got married and we flipped flopped. I was a parent, I was a child. And what my husband had nothing to do with the divorce, it was me. Hungry, wanting to have more dates, because I never had a date in my life. He had nothing to do with it. So I think I hope today is people's time out to really take inventory, because many times people in midlife say, I have a midlife crisis, no you don't, there is no crisis, there is a transition. It's a new beginning, it's a fresh start.

It's a fresh start and there is no problem. There is a challenge. So you have a challenge and a transition, not a crisis. And I have tattooed on my arm. The obstacle is the way. Show me again. The obstacle is the way. It's the way. And it's going to be your way, your unique, your one-of-a-kind diamond.

This is my first book about philosophy, the obstacle is the way. Oh, thank you. How many books did you read? Right. I've written 11 books. Oh, my God. So you're going to have a dozen books. I'm trying to get to a dozen. Yes, my next book is about courage. I'm doing a book, a series of books on the

Cardinal Virtues, Courage, Justice, Temperance and Wisdom. Thank you. Thank you. I hope I'll be alive to read it. And I couldn't be more satisfied today that I met someone who is doing everything in his power to see to it that that Holocaust was never, ever happened again. And I wanted what your commitment and remembering a picture to it's not what happens, it's what we do with it. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoic Podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple years we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you.

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