Contact: Sammy McDavid
STARKVILLE, Miss.--An Auschwitz survivor who went on to become an internationally recognized psychologist and motivational speaker shares her life's story April 13 during a public program at Mississippi State.
Edith Eva Eger's visit to the university is sponsored by the Campus Activities Board. Her presentation on taking charge of one's own destiny begins at 7 p.m. in the Colvard Union ballroom.
It was 59 years ago this year that a liberating U.S. soldier saw Eger's small hand moving beneath a pile of corpses at the massive Nazi death camp in Poland. The 17-year-old orphan whose Hungarian parents had been sent to the gas chamber by infamous camp doctor Joseph Mengele weighed only 40 pounds and had a broken back from her 15-month internment.
While recuperating from her injuries, Eger met and married a Czechoslovakian freedom fighter. Eventually leaving Europe, she and her husband and their new baby girl arrived penniless in New York City. For a time, they lived with an aunt in the Bronx.
The family (now including two other children) eventually moved to Texas, where Eger would earn a doctorate in psychology and her husband, a certified public accounting license.
Because she so readily identifies with the underdog, Eger has devoted her life to freedom fighting. Among other activities, she marched with Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma, Ala., and joined Tibetans in an ongoing struggle to free their Asian homeland from occupation by the People's Republic of China.
Today, "Edie" Eger has a professional practice in La Jolla, Calif., and a faculty appointment at the University of California, San Diego. She is a specialist in logotherapy, a field of psychotherapy based on a search for meaning in life.
In addition to numerous public speaking engagements, she is a frequent guest on national television and radio programs.
For more information, telephone Kelly Nesbit at (662) 325-2930.