Baby whose mom died saving her is reunited with dad

By SHELLY PAZ, AP
Efrat Unterman, the five-month-old baby whose mother threw her out of her car window to save her during Wednesday's horrific terrorist attack on the capital's Jaffa Road, was reunited with her father on Thursday. The child's mother, Batsheva Unterman, 33, was one of the three people during the bulldozer rampage by a Palestinian from east Jerusalem. Seconds before her car was struck, she saved her baby by throwing the child to safety. The baby escaped unhurt. It took hours to locate the child's father, who did not know his wife and baby were involved in the attack, rescue services said Thursday. Efrat, whose great-grandfather was chief rabbi of Israel, made the nation's heart skip a beat when it was initially reported that her parents could not be located. Magen David Adom paramedic Eyal Zehavi, who arrived at the scene of the attack with his pregnant wife, said someone handed him the infant and told him she had been taken out of the crushed car in which her mother had died. Zehavi was relieved to find out that Efrat, who was admitted to Shaarei Tzedek Medical Center, was in good physical condition. When initial efforts to locate her family failed, a social worker had Efrat taken to a foster family. When Efrat's family was eventually found later Wednesday, she was put in the care of her aunt because her father, Ido, was busy arranging his wife's funeral, which took place late Wednesday night at the city's Givat Shaul Cemetery. According to relatives, Efrat will stay with her aunt until the shiva was over. On Thursday afternoon, though, Efrat was brought to her family's home in the Rehavia neighborhood to be with her father. According to police and eyewitnesses, when Batsheva understood she would not survive, she unbuckled Efrat, allowing the easy rescue of her daughter. The family issued a statement on Thursday saying that "she had great devotion that was shown in her last minutes when she saved her daughter's life. To our deep sorrow, Efrat won't live to know her mother." Batsheva, who was a kindergarten teacher at Ganei Homat Shmuel in Jerusalem's Har Homa neighborhood, had been on extended maternity leave but had maintained close contact with the kindergarten, the parents and the children. One of the parents who attended Unterman's funeral on Wednesday told The Jerusalem Post that she had been "a rare person." "She was a unique person whose good nature lit up her face and made the children love being around her," the parent said. "My daughter was happy to go to the kindergarten when Batsheva was there." Ilan Kamintzki, the director of Ganei Homat Shmuel, told the Post: "Usually when someone dies in such horrible tragedy everyone says they were special, but Batsheva was really one of a kind." "We haven't told the children yet what has happened. We don't know how they will react, because we know they loved her dearly... This is a heart-breaking tragedy." Unterman was the daughter of Rebecca and James Lubenstein, who made aliya from the Netherlands. Her husband, Ido, is originally from England, and his late grandfather, Rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman, was chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Israel from 1964 to 1972, and before that chief rabbi of Tel Aviv and of Liverpool. Like Unterman, Elizabeth Devorah Goren Friedman, 54, was a teacher, and she too was buried in Givat Shaul late Wednesday. Born in Austria, Friedman held dual Austrian and Israeli citizenship. She lived in Jerusalem's Katamon neighborhood, worked as a teacher at the School for the Blind, and was a volunteer at Hadassah Hospital. Friedman is survived by her husband and three children, Issachar, Tzvi and Yael.