MUMBAI: When Sandra Samuel grabbed two-year-old Baby Moshe sitting in a pool of blood and escaped with him at the height of the Nariman House siege, she also risked a few extra seconds to pick up his doll from a pile of rubble. The toddler clung on to his Indian nanny and clutched his doll over the next few days as the city mourned the loss of 166 lives, including Moshe’s rabbi father and pregnant mother.
Although she makes it clear to TOI that any conversation about her memories of the 26/11 carnage will be strictly off limits, the petite Sandra (53), her frizzy hair tamed into a ponytail and swept back with a hairband, breaks into a smile at the mention of Moshe, who she fondly calls “Sonu”. “I travel to Afula on Saturdays to be with him. Not on Sundays now because it’s almost 5.30pm by the time he returns home from school,” she explains before showing off her Sonu’s prowess. “He learnt to count ek, do, teen, chaar in Hindi while he was still in Mumbai and before he even turned two. And now he knows a Hindi poem too which he can recite, Machhli jal ki rani hai,” she says, her eyes lighting up.
Sandra’s sons continue to live in Mumbai in Mira Road where Sandra resided before she came to work for Moshe’s parents, Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and Rivka Rosenberg, emissaries of the Chabad in Mumbai.
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Nine years on, the look of anxiety on one of the bravest faces of the 26/11terror attack has dissolved. A petite frame clad in chequered trousers and a plain white top, Sandra Samuel is in Mumbai with Moshe and his grandparents. On Wednesday morning, she returned to Chabad House once more, this time accompanied by her sons Martin (34) and Jackson (27).
“I used to live on Mira Road until I moved to Chabad House to work for the Holtzbergs in 2003. Chabad House at the time used to be in Shelley’s Hotel in Colaba opposite the Radio Club and the couple would live in a penthouse. I lived with them as a fulltime nanny (Sandra was a nanny to the Holtzbergs’ first and second child, both of whom died of a genetic illness) and would return to my Mira Road house on weekends. It was later, during Moshe’s birth in 2006, that they moved to Hormutsji Street,” Sandra told TOI with a guarded smile.
This isn’t Sandra’s first trip back home. “I come to Mumbai every two years to spend time with my sons,” she added. Recalling moments from the time spent in Chabad House and how the space had changed over time, Sandra said: “When Rabbi Gavy was here, it was open to all. He wanted no security, wanted everyone to come. Now it’s a fort and a business. You need to pay for eating here now.”
Sandra has been living in Israel for the last nine years. A Christian from Goa, she had lived most of her life in Mumbai until 2008 when tragedy struck and she chose to give up her life in India, leaving her two sons, aged 16 and 23 behind, to live in Israel for “as long as my baby needs me”. Her husband, a Malayali mechanic, had died suddenly in his sleep of an undiagnosed illness earlier that same gruesome year.
Sandra was awarded the Esfira Maiman Women Rescuers Medal in recognition of her bravery by the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation in 2008 before being granted honorary citizenship by the Israeli government in 2010. She continued being mother to Baby Moshe at Rivka’s parents’ home in Afula until he turned six and Sandra moved to Jerusalem to work at Aleh, Israel’s largest network of care for children with severe and multiple disabilities.
“I love the work I do there as caregiver, changing diapers, feeding and bathing the children with special needs and require intensive support to perform daily activities,” she said. On being asked why her sons never moved to Israel she counters: “What would they do in a tiny country like Israel? They offer jobs mostly to Israelis. It’s better for them here.”
