Pocsalek was a hopeless manic patient of mine, but he was also a genius. One evening after hours he broke into my office and demanded that we change places and roles. He ordered me to lay on the couch while he made himself comfortable behind my desk. Pocsalek also set his fee, twice as much as I charged him.

He knew all about my problem and decided that my only hope for recovery was to travel to all the places I have ever been in my life. I took the plane from Los Angeles to Paris, a train to Budapest, another train to my hometown Oradea, Romania. I took trips to all the places where I lived, the places where I lived with my parents, where I graduated from Medical School, the ghetto, Auschwitz, Thil-Longwy, Kockendorf, Heilbronn, Dachau, Allach and Staltach. It was not easy, but I located the first shabby apartment where we lived when I was four years old in Oradea first.

If by some miracle I knew the life ahead of me, my choice would have been not to be born. But since neither the predicament, nor the choice to be or not to be is up to the individual, I put up with my unavoidable fate. Do you believe me? Don't. I turned into a dare devil and fought the hell out of the situation.

My life was a constant struggle for survival since I was four years old. I escaped from flood when four, from fire when seven, from rape when seven, survived the Rumanian Gardist, the Hungarian fascists, Auschwitz and five concentration camps and the communists. I paid the price, was hit by a mental block, buy climbed out of it, recaptured my memory by traveling back in all places I polluted air with my presence. It is how this book was born. Enjoy it, but don't try to learn from me, I did everything wrong.