[Here is one such story:]

Chava knew that she could not hold on much longer. She looked at her two girls, Faigle and Suri. How could she leave them? They were too young, too innocent, to fend for themselves in a world gone mad. In a flash she realized that there were no more choices to make. She must say goodbye or she would leave them without even a farewell. If things had been different she would have soon been celebrating her 35th birthday.

"Faigle. Take care of Suri. She's your only sister left. If you don't take care of her, she'll die. Promise me, Faigle, that you'll do it. You're a big girl, she's so little." Faigle held her mother's hand as it slowly became cold and stiff.

The next years were full of the banal yet indescribable horror that we have learned to speak about without emotion because we have no other choice. Faigle did whatever she had to do to save herself and Suri. Nothing remained sacred except the oath that she had whispered to her mother.

She became a kapo. The Nazis enjoyed the spectacle of a Jewish girl breaking the bones of other Jewish girls and worse, all in order to survive another day. They took pleasure in the indignity and cruelty that they had forced upon her.

It was almost the end. The rumors were true; the Allies would prevail, and within days the nightmare would end. Not for Faigle. Two days before the camp was liberated, one of the German soldiers waited until she left the bunk for a moment. He found the little girl's hiding place, the one he had pretended not to see. Within seconds it was over. He left Suri's corpse in the middle of the floor, and waited near the wall so that he wouldn't have to miss even a second of the unfolding climax of the melodrama that he had created.

It was not long in coming. Even the women whom Faigle had beaten, humiliated, and almost destroyed wept with her.

In the course of time, Faigle joined the ranks of the living dead that haunted post-war Israel. She spoke to no one. Answered no questions. When she was hungry she found more in the trash cans than the women in her bunk had seen in the five years of the war. She walked aimlessly through the Promised Land, calling nowhere home and liking it that way. Faigle's life had ended two months before her 20th birthday. The years that mercilessly passed since that day were irrelevant and burdensome.

Something changed when her journey in her private hell took her to Netanya.

Rabbi Shloime Bergman noticed everyone. He was the sort of community organizer that couldn't help but see what others wished to ignore. Faigle was a challenge to his commitment to doing good. She wouldn't accept hospitality, clothing, or anything more than the most minimal level of shelter from the elements. She was filthy, repulsive, and clearly not quite sane.

When he reported to Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam (the Klausenberger Rebbe) that he had come across a woman wandering alone through the city streets resisting all attempts to help her, the rabbi gave him a non-negotiable mission.

"Bring her here. To me. I will find a way to help her."

Bergman tried to explain that she was beyond help, lice-ridden, ungrateful to those who provided her with her needs, and resistant of any attempt to unravel the knotty threads of her self-hatred. The rabbi reiterated his mission.

Bergman somehow managed to get the young woman to the rabbi's household. It took six months of profound endurance, but the day of the breakthrough finally arrived.

Her story came out in torrents. She left nothing to the imagination, spared herself no humiliation. When she reached the crescendo she screamed again and again: "And it was all for nothing. Nothing. They killed her anyway. It was all for nothing."

She tore at her hair and scratched her arms mercilessly. The rabbi looked downwards, waiting for the moment when she could actually hear another voice.

"You did the wrong thing, but you are not an evil person. You have forgotten the true villain. If it were not for the Germans, may their names be blotted out, none of this would have happened. It was they, not you, who are the villains. It was they, not you, who forced you to make tragic choices. It was they, not you, who killed your family, burned their bodies, and ruined everything that they touched. You can repent, do teshuvah. You are just as much a victim as your victims."

The rabbi's words brought about the closest thing to revival of the dead that we are likely to see until the Messiah comes.

We can choose to define ourselves through the evil that envelops us due to our bad choices, or we can move on, reject the evil, and rediscover the inherent Godliness within us. This may be the time.