Mumbai Siege: The Story Of An Amazing Escape

We didn't know what to make of the pictures at first. It took a while to understand that the Indian woman who suddenly appeared 12 hours into the siege outside the Jewish Community Center where gunmen were holding hostages, with an auburn haired toddler in her arms, had in fact escaped from inside the building, rescuing herself and the baby.

Sandra Samuel is now in Israel, with baby Moshe Holtzberg. Hers is a remarkable story.

We sent CBS News producer Michal Ben-Gal to talk to her, and to the baby's great uncle, who himself plays a remarkable role in this tale.

On that night, Sandra was in the kitchen of the Narriman House. She'd worked there for five years, the last two as Moshe's nanny. She and the baby were very close; she slept in his room at night, and got up with him when he cried for water.

Just before 10 p.m. Sandra heard explosions. At first, she thought it was local children making a racket with firecrackers. "I opened the door and no, it's a boy shooting at me. I see him shooting at me, and the fire coming at me, and I jumped back and closed the door." As the gunmen stormed the building, she ran and hid in a storeroom with another Narriman House worker.

For more than twelve hours, the two of them hid in the dark, listening as the terrorists rounded up hostages and rampaged through the building. "Bombing, shooting, shooting the lights," remembers Sandra.

At quarter to eleven the following morning, Sandra suddenly heard something else. Baby Moshe. "He was crying my name." Without thinking, she says, knowing the terrorists were in the building, but not knowing where, she opened the door of her hiding place, and ran up the stairs.

Moshe was in the room above the storeroom. He was standing screaming, next to his mother, who was lying on the floor.

"I just ran, picked him up and ran out. That's it," says Sandra.
Sandra thinks he may have been unconscious for hours, stunned by a blow on his back that left bruises from five fingers.

The baby's great uncle, a respected Rabbi and founder of Israel's largest children's home and center, calls Sandra a hero. "I think she is a great hero, because she has the chance to leave and save herself, because she knows that danger, that terrorists are there. But she hears Moshe crying, she gives her life to go and get the child," says Rabbi Yitzhak Dovid Grossman.

But Sandra is haunted. She believes Moshe's father, Rabbi Gaby Holtzberg, and his mother, Rivka, were still alive when she grabbed the baby and ran. Both were on the floor. Rivka, she says, was still, in a sleeping position. "The Rabbi was on his stomach. But one bullet, I think had hit his leg because there was some blood. So, I think that at that time, nothing had happened. They had just shot him with one bullet." Is she a hero? "No, no, not one bit," Sandra says. "Because if I was, I would have tried to do something for my Rabbi, for my Rivka. But I am a coward. I just took the baby and I ran and that's it."

Irony of ironies, Rabbi Grossman, who has done so much to help thousands of orphaned and at-risk youngsters in Israel through his center at Migdal Ohr, will now help care for the newest orphan, great-nephew Moshe.

"When he cries, I also cry. To see a child like Moshe who lost his father and his mother for nothing, my heart is crying," he says.

Sandra will stay with the baby for as long as he needs her, she says. "Now I want to see that this baby, who has been given in my care, he grows big. Brave like his Aba (father). You know strong, clever, very clever. Yes. I want to see that when I become old. By God's grace, I hope I am there to see it," adding "all my blessings to my Moshe baby."

To help Moshe, go to www.chabadindia.org.