Posted on 06/21/2002 6:41:24 PM PDT by xvb
'I'm crying enough tears to fill an ocean'
By TOVAH LAZAROFF AND MARGOT DUDKEVITCH
With her head wrapped in bandages, Penina Eisenmann pushed herself out of her hospital bed yesterday to go to the double funeral in Ofra of her daughter, Gal, five, and her mother, Noa Alon, 60.
"It's the last thing I can do for them," Penina told reporters yesterday at Jerusalem's Hadassah-University Hospital in Ein Kerem.
The last thing she remembers before the terrorist attack that murdered seven in Jerusalem on Wednesday, she is holding her daughter's hand. They are crossing the street by the French Hill intersection. Ahead of them is Noa, who is wheeling her 18-month-old grandson, Sagi, in a baby carriage.
"The explosion caught us in the middle of the street," Eisenmann said. "What comes to me is that my mother caught the brunt of the blast, so she was able to protect me. My daughter was so small it destroyed her. I'm told the terrorist deliberately went next to the mothers and the children, wanting to kill as many as possible." Eisenmann said she vaguely remembers the ambulance ride. Waking up in the hospital, she asked about her children and her mother. They told her that only her son was wounded, but was going to be fine.
"So I understood," Eisenmann said. When her husband, Yitzhak, found her later that evening, he confirmed the double loss. He had found his son earlier at another hospital.
"They were the two most precious things to me, my mother and my daughter," Eisenmann said. "I'm crying enough tears to fill an ocean."
Speaking of her daughter, Eisenmann said that Gal had only recently celebrated her fifth birthday. "She was a delightful girl, beautiful with blonde hair. She was very intelligent; so much so, that sometimes I could not understand what she wanted, because she made so many explanations. Her kindergarten teacher told me she contributes so much. I think they [the kindergarten class] will be very sad.
"We were good friends," said Eisenmann, explaining that they spent a lot of time talking. In the afternoons they played together; she liked filling a pool for Gal in the backyard.
"I do not know how I will have the strength to go on," Eisenmann said. But thinking of her husband, son, and family, she knows she must.
In the months before the explosion, her husband, an immigrant from Colombia, asked whether they shouldn't think of leaving. "He was afraid, it's natural to be afraid. I told him that for me to leave Israel would be like killing me, because I am so strongly connected to this country. If someone has cancer, you can not leave them at the worst moments," Eisenmann said.
Despite her head injury, and the cuts and bruises on her face and arms, Eisenmann said she pulled herself together to talk with reporters. On television she always sees stories of those wounded and killed in terror attacks, so she knows it is important to talk.
"I am making this effort maybe someone will hear us and understand that we are suffering here. I want to deliver this message so that this will be the last sacrifice," Eisenmann said.
"We want to live in peace, we want to be like normal people," her brother Ariel Alon said. Until the attack, he was having a normal day in his home near Haifa, Ariel said. He had just returned from taking his children to the pool when his wife told him something happened in Jerusalem. His sister, Penina, and his mother were not in his mind. He feared for his other sister, Yifat, who often caught rides at that intersection.
He called his parents' home in Ofra to check. His younger brother, Ron, 22, said it was not Yifat, but Noa and Penina who might be in trouble. He thought they were near the scene of the attack. Ron said he tried their cellphones and they weren't answering.
On hearing this, Ariel said he started calling hospitals and ended up L. Greenberg Forensic Institute at Abu Kabir looking for his mother. "I'm not a worrying person by nature. I always believed my mother was so strong, bullets could not go through her. I was sure she could beat anything, that nothing would happen to her. I feel like I'm in a dream, like it's not reality. I'm talking about it as if I'm separate from it," Ariel said. "It's two hours before the funeral and we still do not believe what happened."
After years of working as a kindergarten teacher, his mother had just gotten a job as a regional kindergarten supervisor. "I was happy that she was starting a new life at 60," Ariel said. Their last conversation revolved around a car she wanted to buy to travel among the schools in her area.
On Wednesday, shortly before the explosion, his mother organized a musical performance in Ofra called "Joy Under the Routine of Emergency." Eisenmann came with her children to help out. A video tape shows Eisenmann singing for the children. Noa can be seen clapping and having fun. Later, the video tape, which showed the clothing they wore that day, would be used to help identify his mother and niece, Gal.
Community resident Na'ama Kaplan said of Noa, "She was such a wonderful person. Her language was so rich. She was one of the first kindergarten teachers in the community, the type of person every one dreams of having as their teacher."
On Wednesday, Kaplan said "she made so many speeches and never stopped thanking all those who supported her, it was as if she knew she would not see them again. Everyone loved her."
After the program, Noa, Eisenmann, Gal, and Sagi, took a bulletproof van to French Hill. They were walking across the street to catch a bus to Eisenmann's home in Ma'aleh Adumim. "It should have passed as a normal moment, a grandmother wanting to go home with her grandchildren," Ariel said.
Now, Ariel said he has to explain to his three young children that they had lost both "their beloved grandmother and cousin. We are asking them to make pictures, to do something positive. Yesterday afternoon, thousands attended the double funeral. Wrapped in cloth, one large body and one small one were laid out stretchers. They they were buried side-by-side in Ofra, where Noa had lived with her husband, Hanoch.
"Noa gave so much to this community that now after her death a music center will probably be dedicated in her name. Noa always said children must learn about music," Kaplan said. "It is enough, this situation. Ofra has known so much grief and sorrow in the past two years, we have already set up a number of memorials for those murdered by terrorists, and now we are once again confronted with another loss."
Wednesday's victims
The names of six of the seven victims of Wednesday night's bombing in Jerusalem's French Hill neighborhood were released for publication yesterday:
Gila Sarah Kessler, 19, of Eli
Noa Alon, 60, of Ofra
Gal Eisenmann, five, of Ma'aleh Adumim (Alon's granddaughter)
Hadassah Jungreis, 20, of Migdal Ha'emek
Shmuel Yerushalmi, 17, of Shilo
Michal Franklin, 22, of the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City
Twenty people injured in the French Hill attack were still hospitalized yesterday, three of them in serious condition.
11 others injured in Tuesday's attack opposite the city's Beit Safafa neighborhood remained hospitalized yesterday, including three in serious condition.
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