L.A. Chabad mourns couple slain in Mumbai
About 1,000 people gather in Westwood for a memorial. Plans are made to transfer the Holtzbergs' 2-year-old son to Israel.
As Jews in Los Angeles today mourned a slain couple who had run a Mumbai Jewish center besieged by terrorists, arrangements were under way to move the former emissaries' 2-year-old son Moshe to Israel, where he will live with the nanny who rescued him and his maternal grandparents.
About 1,000 people showed up for a memorial at the West Coast headquarters of the ultra-Orthordox Chabad organization in Westwood, closing a stretch of Gayley Avenue as they paid tribute to Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, and vowed to remain steadfast in the face of the attacks.
Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin, executive director of West Coast Chabad Lubavitch, addressed his remarks directly to the terrorists, saying, "You thought you would do us in, but . . . we the Jewish people, we who believe in light . . . we shall continue."
To sustained applause, Marshall Grossman, the Chabad house chairman, said of the terrorists: "May they burn in hell."
Moshe's grandparents are affiliated with the world's largest Jewish orphanage, Migdal Ohr, which serves 6,500 orphaned and disadvantaged children in northern Israel, a spokesman said.
The nanny who saved him, Sandra Samuel, has told reporters that she hid for 12 hours last week when terrorists took over Mumbai's Chabad Lubavitch Center, which was run by Rabbi Holtzberg, 29, and his wife, 28. The center served Mumbai's Jewish community and was a home-away-from-home for traveling Jews.
Samuel said she heard Moshe crying and found him standing next to his parents, who were covered with blood. A resident of India, Samuel said the two were lying on the floor and appeared to be unconscious. She scooped up the child and fled the building along with the center's caretaker.
The orphanage spokesman, Robert Katz, said he was told an additional detail. "She basically dared the terrorists to shoot at her while carrying a baby," he said.
Katz said he learned this from Migdal Ohr's founder, Rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman, who is also the baby's grand-uncle by marriage. Rivkah Holtzberg's mother, Yehudit Rosenberg, is the sister of Grossman's wife.
Rivkah's father, Shimon Rosenberg, runs an elementary school for girls at Migdal Ohr, Katz said.
"I just received word from Rabbi Grossman personally . . . that, through Migdal Ohr's efforts, the baby, the nanny, the grandparents and the bodies are now scheduled to depart India tomorrow afternoon India time. . . . The child will live with his grandparents at this point. . . . They live close to Migdal Ohr. . . . When he is ready he will be attending one of their full-time day-care centers."
