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For the last three months, I have been having trouble sleeping. In my sleep, I scream, cry, hit myself, bite myself, and shout that I want to die. My doctor sent me to a sleep specialist, who could not help me and thought it best that I consult a neurologist and a psychiatrist.

I thought the problem was that my body had finally given in to the abuse I had put it through fifty years of nonstop travel across time zones and working 24/7. So, I decided to go to an ashram in India that I visit periodically, to meditate, do some yoga, rest, and catch my breath.

It did not work. I continued screaming, crying, and begging God to take me because I wanted to die.

Two energy therapists who happened to be visiting the ashram told me they thought I was reliving the trauma of the Second WorldWar, which my body had absorbed into its cells: the pain and the fear that, throughout my life after the Holocaust, I had tried to suppress by working24/7. Now that I have stopped traveling because of my age, the memories are surfacing. A healer from Russia came to help, confirmed this hypothesis, and we began analyzing my nightmares.

Why was I shouting, “I want to die, I want to die”? I had no reason. I have a wonderful marriage, great kids, grandchildren, appreciative clients, and dedicated associates. I have no reason whatsoever to want to die. I was crying that I wanted to die because I wanted to die together with the people I loved most: my grandparents, Gentil and Mushon Kalderon; my cousins, who were my age at the time, five and six; my uncles; my whole family.

I went to Treblinka, the extermination camp, to learn how they died. They were taken off the train — the whole Jewish community of Macedonia: old people, women, children, babies. From the train, they were taken to a building with closed windows and doors, and car exhaust was pumped into the room until they fainted. Then they were stacked on top of one another like logs prepared for a fire. Gasoline was poured over them, a fire was lit, and they burned alive for days until they all died.

I was screaming in my sleep because somehow, I could hear, sense, and feel their screams as they were burning alive, and I wanted to die with them.

What to do?

People die twice. The first time is physical. The second time is when no one remembers them anymore. It is my role now to make sure their memory stays alive, so that they do not die a second time.

I have decided that I will not die. I will live as long as I am allowed to live, to remind the world of the atrocities of theNazis and to fight, as best I can, against any atrocity, against killing people just because they are Jews.

I have heard about people who deny that the Holocaust ever happened, but I know many people who think Israel should not exist. Perhaps we are at the edge of another Holocaust, and now my family will be the next to perish. It is my role to remind the world of the Holocaust and to spread the word that Israel deserves to exist — that the Jewish people need a country in which they can feel secure after two thousand years of persecution, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust.

Israel is fighting to survive and if the only way left to fight is with the nuclear arsenal it has, we will face another disaster: the whole world will turn against the Jewish people who will be facing a new threat to its existence.