In the cold nights when even sleep avoided me I thought and dreamt with open eyes. I saw myself and my fingers on the piano and played and played till the morning. And with the morning the suffering began with breaking the ice over the water to wash ourselves. To this we were very attentive, to keep clean. Because dirt brought lice. The louse was the most frightening being in our life. They brought the sickness, the illness of which many died and only a few survived.

Many years later, after a television talk, a man called and reported: he woke up one day in the camps, after this illness and around him all were dead. He walked out on the street of the camp, everybody avoided him, because he was uncombed and people were afraid of his lice. He was weak and sat down, cried in his despair. A girl came up to him and asked why he cried. He told her about his illness, that his parents did not move and now "nobody wants to speak to me." "But I speak to you" said the girl and smiled. And seeing me on television he recognized my smile.

And suddenly I too remembered, the anger of my father, seeing me with a boy with lice. And when I did not want to leave the boy, feeling his despair, my father in his anxiety tore me away. The only time in my life that my father had been rude with me.

And in spite of those sad memories I was glad that I had helped that desperate child. Who, according to him, got strength out of my smile.

Yet, at the same time, guilt feelings came up. What about those I had not smiled at? That life too had not smiled at them. And they died of hunger, sickness and pain. Why did they have to die? In what were they bad or wrong and I was good and right??

Am I guilty that I am alive and they not ???

Many years later, during the Yom Kippur War, I was asked to help a young man, who for three days did not react, did not speak, just lying there with wide open eyes without seeing, without movement..The only thing I knew about him was , that he was the only survivor of a tank that was hit. I sat down, helt his hand and tried to remember what had I studied, what did I know about how to help him. From my brain I received no answer, but from the depth of my guts came the words: "you feel guilty that you are alive and your friends had to die". He turned is head and asked "How do you know?". "For I feel guilty to, that my friend died in the Shoa and I am alive". He pressed my hand.

And I understood that my suffering got some sense. That from my suffering I could help a young man...