Edith and her sister Magda achieved what seemed impossible: to get out of Auschwitz alive. They survived the most lethal Nazi concentration and extermination camp, where nearly one million people died. But they were not free. Not yet. When Nazi Germany was on the verge of defeat, the SS organized “death marches”, forced evacuations of concentration camps over long distances under guard and extremely harsh conditions.

Edith and Magda were moved to other concentration camps like Mauthausen, where prisoners were made to hack and carry granite to construct Hitler’s desired new capital for Germany. Mauthausen was also known for the Stairs of Death, where prisoners were forced to climb 186 with 110-pound granite blocks on their backs. Here, Edith came very close to death.

After Mauthausen came another concentration camp, Gunskirchen. It was less fearsome than Auschwitz or Mauthausen because it was not an extermination camp, and there were no crematoria or Stairs of Death, but prisoners there were on the brink of collapse. The many years of war, the inhuman conditions under which they were held in the concentration camps, and the brutality of the death marches began to take its toll. It was just too much. They were almost living corpses, and it was just a matter of time before they would die.

In Gunskirchen, things started to get very ugly for Edith. She couldn’t do it anymore. Knowing that the end was near, she lay down on one of the many piles of corpses and waited for the end. But then something remarkable happened.

The Americans liberated the camp, and a soldier, almost by chance, found Edith half-dead among the pile of corpses. Edith was rescued and taken safely along with the rest of the survivors. The moment Edith had been waiting for since she entered Auschwitz almost one year ago had come. Freedom. She was free. And on top of that, her sister Magda also survived! Both were free.

However, their situation was far from ideal. When Edith and her sister were liberated, almost everyone they knew and loved had died. Both were starving and severely malnourished. Edith later discovered that, due to physical abuse, her back was broken. She had tiffus, pneumonia, and pleuritis. The shock had been so great that she even had to relearn how to write and read. Only seventeen years old, she and her sister had lived through one of the greatest atrocities in human history. Edith was free, but healing would take much longer.

And now what?

In a recent podcast interview, Edith was asked about Auschwitz. She said, “Auschwitz was an opportunity for an opportunity. An opportunity to discover the power within me, that no Nazi could ever take away from me.”

That’s quite profound. Part of the admiration that I feel for Edith comes from the fact that she went from experiencing such terrible things to seeing Auschwitz, almost 80 years later, as an opportunity to improve as a human being. I want to understand what it takes to get to that level of wisdom, and that’s why I recently wrote about Edith’s insights about the power of choice and the difference between victimhood and victimization. In this blog post, I will discuss one idea critical to understanding Edith’s healing.

Survivors don’t have time to ask, Why me? For survivors, the only relevant question is What now?

It doesn’t matter if you are a survivor; this question affects you because it is about the difference between living stuck in the past or focusing on the present and future. This distinction is crucial because it will define the type of person you become and what you get out of life.

As Edith says in her book The Gift, “We ask ‘Why?’ over and over, believing that if we could figure out the reason, the pain would lessen. Why did I get cancer? Why did I lose my job? Why did my partner have an affair? We search for answers, for understanding, as if there’s a logical reason to explain why things happened the way they did. But when we ask why, we’re stuck searching for someone or something to blame—including ourselves.”

We all have experienced at some point something that sucks, and we all have regrets and could name a few things we would do differently today. Sometimes, it’s gone too far, and we feel like we need time to process these negative experiences, and that’s fine. But don’t take too much time because being stuck in the past wishing things to be different doesn’t help. There is a Buddhist parable that goes as follows:

Suppose a man is struck by a poisoned arrow and the doctor wishes to take out the arrow immediately. Suppose the man does not want the arrow removed until he knows who shot it, his age, his parents, and why he shot it. What would happen? If he were to wait until all these questions had been answered, the man might die first.

That’s what happens when we get stuck in the past asking, “Why me?”. This short story perfectly illustrates the consequences of being stuck in the past and how pointless it is to care for things that don’t matter.

Think again about Edith. With all she had to go through, she could have let hate or fear consume her, or she could have been stuck in the past, blaming Hitler for all the problems in her life. And it would be understandable, but she did the opposite: she realized the past can’t be changed and that sometimes there is only one thing you can do: focus on the present moment and look ahead.

As she says in her book The Gift, “When I ask, ‘What now?’ instead of ‘Why me?’ I stop focusing on why this bad thing happened—or is happening—and start paying attention to what I can do with my experience.”

That’s one of the reasons why she’s so inspiring, and I believe Edith is the standard for how anyone should recover from hardship. Pause for a moment and reflect on how far you could get if you started paying attention to the present moment instead of wasting time and energy on the past. If instead of trying to change what can’t be changed, you focus on what can be done to improve the situation at hand. I would say you could achieve things you now consider impossible.

Do you know Amelia Earhart? She had the dream of becoming the first women aviator. But being a woman in the 1920s was not easy, especially if you wanted to become an aviator. She had to overcome gender stereotypes, financial constraints, and even several flying accidents. She was mocked, denied, and underestimated.

But in 1932, after years of defying the odds, Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. This was an incredible feat, accomplished only by a select group of people. She went on to broke different world records, becoming a historical figure in aviation. And more importantly, Amelia Earhart became an iconic figure for her determination and courage to push boundaries, her fight for women’s rights and her contributions to humanitarian efforts.

But what would Amelia have achieved if she had only focused on complaining about the unfair situation for women at that time? What if she had accepted the roles imposed by society and assumed that women could never fly? What if she had doubted herself?

She wouldn’t have achieved what she did and wouldn’t be Amelia Earhart. Imagine how mentally strong a person must be to do what she did. You can’t be normal and achieve what she did. When Amelia had to overcome challenges, what do you think she was most likely to say to herself: “Why me?” or “What now?” I think the answer is clear.

On the side of her plane Amelia Earhart painted the words, “Always move with your stick forward.” That’s it. Don’t ask why me. Don’t get stuck in the past. Ask what now. Always move with your stick forward.