Victimhood is something chosen after the event, not identical to suffering itself

Eger's central distinction, repeated throughout the book, is between being victimized — something that happens to a person through no fault of their own, like deportation to a concentration camp — and being a victim, which she describes as an ongoing psychological stance a person can choose to adopt or refuse in how they carry that history afterward.

She's careful not to minimize the reality or severity of what happened to her and countless others; the point isn't that suffering wasn't real or terrible, but that the meaning a person assigns to their suffering afterward, and whether they let it permanently define their identity and possibilities, remains within their control even when the original event was entirely outside it.

This distinction became the organizing principle of her later therapeutic practice: helping patients separate the fact of what happened to them from the ongoing story they were telling themselves about who they are because of it.

Takeaway: you cannot always control what happens to you, but you retain some choice in the ongoing meaning you build around it afterward.