BBC Radio Interviews Sandra

By Outlook, BBC World Service (broadcast on 12 Jan 2010)

The Indian nanny who saved a two year old boy from the Mumbai terror attacks talks about their new life together in Israel.

Sandra Samuel had been working at the Jewish centre in Mumbai, the Chabad house, since 2003 and described her relationship with her employers – Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka – as “very wonderful.”

One night in late November 2008, some time after 2 year old Moshe had been put to bed, gunmen stormed the five-storey building.

As Sandra barricaded herself in the basement, the Rabbi and his wife were shot.

When Sandra heard baby Moshe crying for his “Ima” and “Abba” – or Mummy and Daddy – she rushed to rescue him and ran out into the street.

Now she has moved to Israel where she’s looking after Moshe at the home of his maternal grandparents in Afula. She’s been hailed as a hero.

Sandra talks to BBC’s Matthew Bannister about how she and Moshe have left their nightmares behind and settled into their new routines.

She describes how Moshe, now aged three, kisses a photograph of his parents every day as he leaves to go to school and tells us that she plans to return to Mumbai and her own children, in two years.