|
|
September 24, 1999/14 Tishri 5760, Vol. 52, No.4
Jewish pensioner, niece killed in blast
LEV KRICHEVSKY
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
MOSCOW - On the eve of the Jewish new year, a Moscow synagogue mailed out wall calendars for the year 5760 to several thousand Jewish families in the Russian capital. The one addressed to Bella Zutler was never delivered.
The 62-year-old Muscovite was killed in last week's terrorist attack on her residential building in southern Moscow. According to Berel Lazar, rabbi of the Marina Roscha synagogue, which maintains Moscow's largest database of Jewish families living in the capital, at least six Jews died in an explosion on the night of Sept. 13 that left at least 118 dead.
Zutler, a pensioner who lived alone, died along with her niece, Irina Fleishman, 37. Hours before the early morning blast, Zutler entertained guests for her birthday. After her friends and family left, Fleishman, who lived in a distant part of town, stayed with her aunt overnight to avoid a lengthy late-night journey.
Four days later, Lazar officiated at the funeral of Zutler and Fleishman at Vostraykovo Cemetery, Moscow's only graveyard with a separate Jewish section.
After rescuers recovered Zutler's body under the ruins, her son, Arkady, arranged the burial through the synagogue. He said his mother was not an observant Jew, yet it was important to give her a Jewish burial. Fleishman, whose body was found in the rubble three days after the explosion, was buried in the same grave as her aunt.
"If they were destined to leave together, they should lay together," Arkady said. "She was the heart of the whole family," he said of his mother.
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov has blamed "Chechen gangsters" for the bombings, and has urged that "special attention" be paid to visitors from the Caucasus region. Police are reportedly singling out people with dark skin.
|
