Mother saves baby, killed seconds later

UK man who helped save infant: Just as I took the baby out, terrorist reversed on top of the car.

By ABE SELIG, SHELLY PAZ, JENNA STARK, JPOST STAFF
jerusalem pigua baby 224 (photo credit: AP)
jerusalem pigua baby 224
(photo credit: AP)
Seconds before being crushed to death by a bulldozer, 33-year-old Batsheva Unterman succeeded in unbuckling her 5-month-old baby from the car-seat and passing her out through the window to safety. "Just as I took the baby out, he reversed on top of the car. The baby is okay, but not the mother," Jeremy Aronson, the man who helped save the baby, told The Jerusalem Post quietly as he sat alone in the waiting room of Hadassah-University Hospital in Mount Scopus. Unterman, who was a kindergarten teacher at Ganei Homat Shmuel, initially had difficulty conceiving a child and had undergone two years of fertility treatments, friends told the Post at her funeral late Wednesday night in the Givat Shaul cemetery. "She was a unique person," said a parent of one of her students. The director of her school in Har Homa, Ilan Kaminetsky, said they did not yet know how to tell Unterman's students that she had died. Another victim in Wednesday's terror attack was Elizabeth Devorah Goren-Friedman, 54. She was also killed when her car was crushed by the bulldozer. Goren-Friedman was a mother of three who had survived a serious illness and was a teacher for the blind in Jerusalem. She died on the operating table in Shaare Tzedek Hospital and was buried late at night in the Givat Shaul cemetery, surrounded by hundreds of family, friends and students. "You were a good friend and a good mother. You made sure we were all happy," her son Issachar eulogized, adding, "You have taught us that volunteering is part of a person's life." "A sinful murderer destroyed a brave life that was filled with your courage to fight back. In spite of the difficulties you encountered during your life, you overcame everything with a smile on your face," Goren-Friedman's husband said during the eulogy. Goren-Friedman was survived by two sons, Issachar and Tzvi, and a daughter, Yael. The third fatality in the bulldozer attack was Jan Raluay, 68, a resident of the Gilo neighborhood in Jerusalem, and soon-to-be grandfather. The eldest from a family of seven, Raluay lost his mother only months after he was born. He, his father, and his sister moved from Iran to India, where they lived for nine years before continuing on to Israel in 1949. Raluay was survived by his wife, two daughters, and a son.