Boy found crying next to bodies
2008-11-29 21:12
Mumbai - His face framed by golden curls, tiny Moshe Holtzberg is the centre of attention for Mumbai's small Jewish community as it mourns the loss of the boy's rabbi father and mother, both killed by Islamist gunmen.
The orphaned Moshe, who turned two this week, is now in the care of his mother's parents after his nanny miraculously rushed him to safety while militants roamed the Jewish centre where the family lived and worked.
"When the baby emerged with the nanny, he had blood stains on him," Benjamin Isaac, secretary of the Indian Jewish Federation told Reuters. "Thankfully it wasn't his blood. But we knew someone's blood had already been spilled."
On Wednesday, two gunmen had stormed the six-storey Nariman House, which housed the centre in Mumbai's Colaba area, a nondescript address on a small street but close to the ritzy hotels and railway station which bore the brunt of a string of attacks by heavily armed militants.
They took eight people hostage, including the wife and child of Israeli-born Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, 29, who arrived in Mumbai in 2003 to run a synagogue and Torah classes as part of the worldwide Chabad-Lubavitch Movement.
Baby found next to bodies
Moshe's nanny, Sandra Samuel, who was on the first floor of the building when the gunmen arrived, locked herself in a room in a desperate bid to stay alive.
"The whole night I heard gunshots and loud blasts," she said in a statement to police. "Next morning it was quiet for a while, when I heard the baby crying."
Samuel quietly unbolted the door, and went up to the second floor where she found Moshe crying next to four people lying motionless on the ground. She picked him up and dashed out.
A handyman who worked for the family also managed to escape.
As the siege of the building dragged on, elite commandos were dropped by helicopter onto the roof of the building, the same men who would later blast their way through the centre, ending the standoff after almost two days of intense fighting.
By then the militants had killed the remaining hostages, including Holtzberg and his 28-year-old wife, Rivka.
At a police station on Thursday, Moshe sat clutching a grimy doll surrounded by Jewish volunteers, while Samuel described her horrifying ordeal.
Long history
He has since been handed to his maternal grandparents, Shimon and Yehudit Rosenberg, who flew to India from Israel with members of ZAKA, Israel's dominant non-governmental rescue-and-recovery organisation which specialises in collecting human remains to ensure a proper Jewish burial.
Fewer than 5 000 Jews remain living among India's billion-plus people, but the faith has a long history here, with the first established community thought to have been formed in the southwestern state of Kerala before AD 70.
The attack on Nariman House pitched Mumbai's tiny Jewish community into the glare of the world's media and its members say they now feel vulnerable.
'He is so small'
Israeli officials say the Chabad centre was targeted for being Jewish, but a Los Angeles-based member of the movement said there was no knowledge of specific threats prior to the attacks.
But he said there had since been reports the gunmen had rented an apartment in a nearby building at some stage, something also reported by Indian media without quoting sources.
"Actually, we have been very concerned for sometime now," the Indian Jewish Federation's Isaac said. "We had been expecting something like this."
For the moment, the community's are thoughts with Moshe.
"The boy's security is of utmost concern to us," said Jonathan Solomon, a prominent community leader. "He had been crying. He is too small you see and all this must be affecting him so much."
- Reuters