My daughter Shira lies bruised, battered and broken after a long surgery that gave her life back. It is Friday evening. Hospital white dominates every corner, so different from the Sabbath white tablecloth and candles. The cold white of the operating room is so nerve-wracking and threatening, compared to the warm white and soothing aura of splendor and sanctity. I never realized there was such different significance to the color white, depending on where you are.

Shira is alternately sleeping and awake, drowsy from the painkillers. At one point, she wants to ask me something. "Daddy, what happened to that family in front of us in line for pizza?"

I know the Skejwerder family she is talking about. Both parents and three children died in the blast. I try to delay news of the tragedy, to protect my child from the bitter news until a later time. Fortunately, the humming of the machines around her drowns out the emotional storm that encompasses me.

But after several minutes Shira asks again, "Daddy, how is that family?" I ask her why she asks specifically about them.

Shira tells me that the children caught fire in the terrible explosion. A small one cried, "Daddy, Daddy, save me!" And the father replied, "Say with me Shema Yisrael -- Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One!"

"Then all was quiet, Daddy." She stares at me. "What happened to them?"

I am almost the sole survivor of a whole family destroyed in the Holocaust.

I grew up on the Shema Yisrael, the basis of our faith, that fateful exclamation before a Jew died, or before they were murdered, and knew the spine-chilling stories of Jews expiring with the hallowed phrase "the Lord is One."

Now, as I hear the same story from my little girl, Treblinka and Sbarro become one. Grandfather, granddaughter -- and I, the father in between. A genetic code -- mysterious, painful, deep -- connects the Holocaust victims and those of Sbarro, whose only sin was being part of the Jewish people.

"Daddy, I will never forget those voices. Never."

Jewish children were murdered then, and are being murdered now. The father, mother and three children standing in front of Shira were killed for being Jews. Images merge of the child of then and now that wanted his father to save him, and the father who knows where they are going, and cries to our Father in Heaven the phrase "Shema Yisrael" together with his dying son. Shema Yisrael from within the flames, then and now.

I can't hold back the tears, and the heart refuses to believe. And I hear Shira's voice bringing me back to the present. "Daddy, I will never forget those voices. Never."

A difficult thought passes through my head. Maybe I myself forgot? Maybe I fell asleep while on guard? Maybe my father remembers that, "In every generation enemies rise up to destroy us," because he was there and felt the Holocaust. But, my friends and I, the generation of Israel's revival, have already sensed the light at the end of the tunnel, the vision of peace and humanity at our doorstep.

Now the images of flames and smoke return, the voices crying out "Shema Yisrael," heard by generations before me, and after me.

Shira, please forget those horrible images. I want you to have peace of mind. But I don't want you to forget the significance of those voices. Because the faith within the flames is so pure and true.

But how can I ask you not to forget when I myself lapsed and allowed myself to be misled by illusions of a new Middle East? Yesterday, a doctor showed me the pre-op X-rays. I saw nails, bolts and screws from the bomb. Now they were all in your small body. Materials meant to build and construct are being used by these savages to wreak havoc and destruction.

Maybe I can prevent the pain and suffering from others in my generation. Maybe others could tighten their loose screws in order to understand whom we are dealing with. In the pantheon of horrors, there is a place for those terrorists and their handlers, together with their Nazi predecessors.

"Shema Yisrael" is said, cried out, and blood flows into blood. May we here in the Land of Israel live to raise a generation with a healthy soul, with peace and with faith.

Shira Nemett, age 15, was released from Shaarei Zedek Medical Center on August 21. She faces a long period of recuperation. Shira can be emailed at: bene@inter.net.il