Mumbai nanny, orphan in Israel

MIGDAL HAEMEK, Israel — After hiding for hours in the besieged Jewish center in Mumbai, Sandra Samuel suddenly heard a cry that made her forget all fear for her own safety: 2-year-old Moshe was calling his nanny's name.

Ignoring crackling gunfire and exploding grenades, she says she charged up the stairs and found the toddler crying by his mother's body, his pants soaked in blood. She grabbed the child and ran with him to safety.

Today, the 44-year-old Indian woman, a Christian, is the Orthodox Jewish toddler's only remaining link to the life he once knew. Moshe Holtzberg's Israeli parents died in the assault. Samuel, a recent widow, has left her own two sons and her homeland to move with the child to Israel, where she says she will stay "as long as my baby needs me."

On Monday, Moshe cheerfully touched and identified in English the animal statues that rimmed the garden of his great-uncle's home, where he and Samuel are staying in this small northern Israeli town.

He sought out Samuel repeatedly, though, smiling as he nestled in her arms.

There was no sign of the inconsolable orphan whose plight captivated millions, his anguished cries of "Eema, Eema!" — "Mommy! Mommy!" — shown worldwide in broadcasts of his parents' memorial service last week.

"At the beginning, he would burst out crying, but that's tapered off," the child's great-uncle, Yitzhak David Grossman, said. "But he clings to Sandra."

"He wants to know why his Eema is not coming, why is Abba not coming," Samuel said, using the Hebrew words for mommy and daddy. Rabbi Gabriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, were killed in the attack.

Grossman, the chief rabbi of Migdal HaEmek, was able to get Samuel a one-year passport and a three-month tourist visa to Israel so the boy would have a familiar face as he recovered from the trauma.

Sabine Haddad, a spokeswoman for Israel's Interior Ministry, said Monday that Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit wants to grant Samuel the status of "Righteous Among the Nations," an honor bestowed upon non-Jews who save the lives of Jews. It would allow her to stay in Israel as long as she wished.