Orphaned toddler cries for parents at memorial

JERUSALEM — The cries of little Moshe Holtzberg wounded hearts Monday at a tearful memorial for his parents in India. "Mommy, mommy, mommy!" he wailed, clutching a toy basketball while squirming in the arms of mourners at the Mumbai synagogue.

Then the toddler and the caretaker who rescued him from the terrorist attack boarded a jet along with the bodies of his parents and four other Jews slain at the Chabad House to fly to Israel — a place the 2-year-old had never seen.

The Israeli air-force plane landed at Israel's international airport just before midnight, and Israeli officials joined relatives and friends of the victims.

Moshe's father, Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg, 29, and mother, Rivka, 28, ran the headquarters of the ultra-Orthodox Chabad Lubavitch movement in Mumbai.

They were among six Israeli citizens killed at the center during the city's three-day terror siege.

Moshe was spirited out of Chabad House on Thursday by Sandra Samuel, a nanny who found him crying beside his parents' bodies, his pants drenched in blood.

"I don't know that he can comprehend or that he will remember seeing his parents shot in cold blood," said Robert Katz, a New York-based fundraiser for Migdal Ohr, an Israeli orphanage founded by the boy's family.

Moshe was accompanied to Israel by his maternal grandparents, Yehudit and Shimon Rosenberg; Samuel came along, too, to provide the child a familiar face.

When terrorists seized Chabad House, Samuel locked herself in a laundry room, then she heard Moshe's mother screaming for help.

When the screaming stopped and it was quiet, she cracked open the door and saw a deserted staircase. She ran up one flight and found the rabbi and his wife, shot to death. She snatched the crying boy and bolted out of the building.

"She's been there with him throughout," Katz said.

Though Samuel had no passport or papers, Moshe's granduncle helped arrange for her to get a visa to Israel.

Moshe's father was a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen and his mother was Israeli. The couple moved to Mumbai in 2003.

It was unclear who would get custody of Moshe, Chabad officials said, though the closely knit ultra-Orthodox outreach group would provide a large safety net.

The toddler has an older sibling who has Tay-Sachs, a genetic disorder that strikes Jews of Eastern European origin. He is permanently hospitalized in Israel, Katz said.