The short speech before Ne’ilah as Yom Kippur comes to a close is the most difficult speech of the year. How can I in a matter of minutes attempt to bring the holiest day of the year to its spiritual apex?

What words can be said which will invigorate men and women who have been fasting for 24 hours and have been on their feet in fervent tefillah for hours and hours? How can I awaken the latent potential that exists in all of us to rise to the occasion at the closing of the gates and not allow the last precious moments of the day to be hijacked by thoughts of what’s on the post-shofar menu?

Tomorrow will already be too late; the time to act is now.

I made a shiva call just days before Yom Kippur. The son of the man who had passed away told the story of how his father Yosef Isenberg had been imprisoned in the Gehinnom of This World otherwise known asAuschwitz.

One day the Nazis decided to eliminate the barely living skeletal figures who occupied one room of the infirmary. Most of these prisoners were much closer to death than to life and some had already left the physical world.

As Mr. Yosef Isenberg was placed on a cart with other prisoners he couldn’t even talk or protest. The cart was wheeled into a large room where the roar of a huge furnace could be heard. Prisoners working in this room began picking up the cart’s bodies — dead or alive — and simply tossing them into the furnace known as Crematorium IV.

And then as the man lying next to Yosef Isenberg was unceremoniously thrown into the furnace Yosef realized where he was and exactly what was about to happen to him. Although he had not eaten in days as the Nazis did not waste food on the infirmed who did not work Yosef reached deep inside himself deep into a place of inner strength he hadn’t even known existed.

He thought about his zeidy who although feeble would remain on his feet the entire Yom Kippur. He recalled his mother who despite having pneumonia had stayed up with him the entire night to rub his own feverish brow without a care for her own wellbeing.

Suddenly calling upon every physical and spiritual reserve and just as he felt the heat of the fire on his bare feet Yosef opened his mouth and screamed a scream heard all the way to the Kisei HaKavod Hashem’s Throne of Glory. Yosef cried out just three words; however those three words penetrated the Gates of Heaven.

“Ich leib noch!” Yosef bellowed. “I am still alive!”

The prisoner charged with throwing the bodies into the crematorium was shocked.

Yosef opened his eyes and shouted it again “Ich leib noch!”

Without saying a word Yosef’s fellow prisoner picked him up and threw him out of the window onto a pile of wood.

Somehow someway with the help of Hashem Yosef survived.

After the war Yosef arrived in America. He had one son who became a talmid chacham and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Yosef was also privileged to see his son be a disseminator of Torah with many talmidim.

All because at the moment of his utmost weakness he was able to remember and summon the strength to declare “Ich leib noch!”

There is hope and there is a tomorrow. For as long as we are still alive.