Father wept over his children's coffins: "I lost everything"

Thousands of participants today (Sunday), at the funeral of seven members of the Sassoon family who perished in Flatbush neighborhood in New York.

The funeral of the Sassoon family children, Elian, Rivka, David, Yehoshua, Moshe, Sarah and Yaakov z"l left in the afternoon at 3 pm US time, from the funeral home "Shomrei Hadas" in Boro Park.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio attended the funeral.

The father Gavriel Sassoon eulogized his children in tears: "I lost everything. You had faces of angels. You were higher souls. You atoned by dying for all the people of Israel."

Director of "Misaskim" Yankie Myers, who is handling the tragic case, tells Behadrey Haredim: "We as members and senior functionaries of the organization, used lobbying to allow the rapid release of the bodies at the morgue to be able to put them on the flight tonight.

"I received the first message about the incident shortly after it happened. When I arrived I found out the extent of the tragedy, I immediately enlisted a few friends, and we started to spread out between the hospitals where the dead children were brought, we wanted to get there quickly to prevent the desecration of the dead. In the midst of the confusion, we wanted to located where the children dispersed, it became clear that two bodies were taken to a certain hospital and the rest were dispersed among hospitals and one body remained at home.

"We also had to reach the hospitals to which the mother and daughter who are still in a serious condition arrived, as well as try to locate the father".

"On Saturday night," Myers continues, "We took the bodies out to the Shomrei Hadas funeral home in Boro Park and this morning we transferred the bodies to the morgue, so we can get permission to bring the bodies for burial, in the meantime we used a roller of pressure on anyone who can help so that we can release the bodies in time and put them onto a flight."

According to the plan, the bodies will be flown to Israel and buried at Mount Hamenuhot in Jerusalem. Aryeh Frankel, El Al spokesman, said the bodies of the children should arrive on the 008 El Al flight from Kennedy Airport in New York, the plane will land in Israel at noon tomorrow.

New York Police appealed today to all participants at the funeral to use public transport to avoid traffic jams and street closures.

Fire Department of Flatbush area, put up stands today at the intersections of adjacent streets to the scene in the neighborhood, and firefighters distributed free batteries for fire detectors in all the homes that have not replaced the batteries yet.




Coffins of the children and the father's hesped. Photo: Newsline Group

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!