Leah Ginzburg
“For the miracle You performed for me at this place!”
I thought I would never be able to write about it. Time has passed. So much has changed. The terrifying images are gradually fading from my dreams; I have begun sleeping at night. And today I felt I could no longer keep from writing about what happened...
I woke to the singing of birds. They were hidden from view. The window of our little room overlooked a garden.
The beauty of the Land of Israel...
You never cease to marvel at the sunrises and sunsets, the flowers, plants, and fruit.
This was our second morning in Israel, which seemed so warm after chilly Moscow. I looked out the window and saw how quickly the sun was rising. Time for me to get up, too! A long and wonderful day lay ahead. My plans were truly “Napoleonic”: get from 9 o'clock, from Ma'ale Adumim to Jerusalem's Central Bus Station (Tachana Merkazit), send my daughter and her friend off from there to Tel Aviv to swim in the sea, then go shopping (orders from friends and acquaintances), then to a travel agency (I wanted to travel around Israel), and some other meetings arranged back in Moscow...
My daughter and I had agreed that by six that evening I would come back to the same place, pick her and her friend up, feed them, and return to our friends in Ma'ale Adumim.
Following this plan, at exactly 9 in the morning I was already standing at the Central Bus Station, reminding the girls not to “roast” in the sun for too long, to drink plenty, not to go too far out into the sea, and not to be late—to be back in Jerusalem by six.
The girls nodded obediently, letting half of what I said go in one ear and out the other, and soon I was waving to them through the window of a large green bus.
The very moment the bus pulled onto the long highway and disappeared from view, I lost all peace of mind.
“Why did I let them go alone? Why did I let them go to the seaside? What came over me? What will happen to them now?”
And indeed, it was as though some kind of spell had come over me. Everything that followed felt like a dream, a state of oblivion. I wandered mechanically through the city, trying to pass the time, somehow to make it to six o'clock. (I would like to remind the reader that we did not yet have mobile phones then. It was impossible to call the girls; all we could do was pray and hope that they would return home safe and sound).
At some point, I realized I was hungry. It was nearly lunchtime, and I hadn't had a bite to eat all morning...
I stopped at the corner of Jaffa Road and King George Street and saw the bright “Sbarro” sign. I had been here many times with my daughter and with friends. “A tasty place!”
After putting a selection of Israeli dishes on my tray, I looked around. The sun was “splashing” its rays through the pizzeria's enormous windows; it was bright and peaceful.
A table became free, and I started toward it, but stopped. I didn't want to sit here alone. There was something of a betrayal in it. My anxiety about my daughter rose again. “Please, let her not go too far out into the sea; please, let nothing terrible happen!”
I remembered that the café also had a second floor. I went upstairs. Half the tables were empty. I sat down at one in a corner, recited a blessing, and broke off a piece of pizza...
I did not immediately understand what had happened. I heard a strange, terrifying sound coming from deep within the earth, shaking everything around me, and the shattering of glass. The air filled with an acrid, poisonous smell that snapped me out of my daze.
Screams, crying, and a siren merged into one continuous, thundering howl. Those sitting on the second floor rushed toward the stairs, but the stairs as such were no longer there. In their place lay debris from the collapsed ceiling. As we made our way down, jumping over the debris, we saw WHAT lay beneath it...
The bloodied, lifeless bodies of people—adults, children, everyone who had been on the pizzeria's ground floor.
I made it out onto the street... Later, at a gathering of those who had survived the explosion, a psychologist asked each of us what we had been thinking at that moment. I clearly remembered my thoughts: “Mama! You passed away when I was only eight. Will my little girl also experience the bitterness of being an orphan? I cannot ‘leave’ now. I cannot leave my child, my beautiful world, the Land of Israel, the birds singing at dawn. I don't want to die! L-rd, don't let me perish!” A vivid image of my mother stayed with me throughout that nightmare.
Once outside, I was astonished to discover that I was alive and unharmed, without a single scratch. It was so strange, so at odds with the reality around me—the street filled with screams, blood, and moans—that I simply went numb; there is no other way to describe it. Mounted police immediately cordoned off the street, and a voice rang out through a loudspeaker: “Anyone who can move, leave the area! Clear the way; there may be another explosion!”
People ran in all directions in panic.
I found myself on the opposite side of the cordoned-off street and wandered off somewhere, tears clouding my eyes, my ears ringing, a terribly bitter taste in my mouth. Police officers shouted and gestured that I could not stay there; it was dangerous. Dangerous? It was “dangerous” for me to stand on my own Land? I, a Jewish woman, had to “flee for safety” in my own country?
I got lost, unable to recognize streets that had once been familiar, dear, and beloved. My thoughts were confused. Before my eyes stood a little girl whose mother had been looking for a table on the pizzeria's ground floor. What had happened to her? Was that tiny child with the enormous brown eyes alive?
My feet brought me to the Western Wall, the place where Jews from all over the world have offered their prayers to the Almighty for many centuries.
There, at the Wall, I gradually came to my senses. I wept, kissing the sunlit stones, giving thanks for my miraculous rescue, and pleading for the lives of those who had been hurt to be spared...
My daughter and her friend went into a kiosk by the sea to buy another bottle of water (so they had listened and were drinking plenty). A television there was broadcasting news from Jerusalem. My little girl froze, then said firmly, “My mother is there, at Sbarro! We have to get to Jerusalem right away!”
I don't know what she felt, or, more precisely, HOW she sensed that I was at Sbarro. When they arrived in Jerusalem, the girls rushed to the intersection of Jaffa Road and King George Street. They tried to find out whether there was a list of survivors of the explosion, tried to get any information at all...
Having learned nothing, they made their way to the Tachana Merkazit, trying to wait until six o'clock. I arrived early too, feeling that I needed to be there now.
I will never forget that reunion...
I thought I would not be able to write about it. Time has passed. So much has changed. The terrifying images are gradually fading from my dreams; I have begun sleeping at night.
But I have not forgotten. And I do not want to forget! I just need to try to live in a way that justifies the life granted to me anew, to be worthy of this gift...